The Ethical Balance of Using Smart Information Systems for Promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

 

Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. I found it very well written, and appreciate the topic. While I think that this manuscript has a lot of positives, I will limit my focus here to what I view as needing improvement.

Most of my reservations about your manuscript stem from the case studies, their presentation, their richness, and how they are interwoven to make a concrete analysis and contribution to what is known about SIS and SDGS.

In the methods section, you state that top-level nodes were decided on by the team, and lower level nodes were left to the coding process and the researchers involved in each case. I would have liked more details regarding this, as it is key to what direction the empirical analysis takes subsequently.  It might be appropriate to outline these top-level nodes, if they were decided a priori, as this constitutes an important building block of your research.

In all of your case study presentations, I feel there is a lack of actual data from the cases. This problem grows in severity as one reads from case 1 to case 6. Overall, most of your discussion in the empirical section is recounting recent literature and UN SDG documents. I find quite limited coverage of the actual cases. While you argue that the cases are in alignment with this literature for the most part, I think you will need to provide a bit richer case material to make a convincing empirical section.

Also, at numerous occasions, the line is blurred between what is derived from the literature, and what is derived from the cases. This might be a result of the fact that the cases have been previously published elsewhere. I suggest a clearer delineation of what is literature and what is data. This might be done be sectioning off more strictly insights from literature from insights from data.

Related to these issues, the discussion section, I feel, does not offer much in the way of the cross-case comparison promised early on in the paper. The majority of the discussion section focuses on reiterating statements from the empirical section, with many of the same arguments and intermingling literature being drawn up again. I think that this is more of an issue in the manuscript due to the fact that the empirics section draws so heavily on literature instead of drawing on the cases themselves. Since the case study itself reads like a combined data + analysis section, the discussion becomes more of an afterthought in my opinion.

Lastly, I did not find the conclusion to be that substantive. You have basically restated the aim of the study, but provide too limited discussion of the meaning of the analysis of the data. I imagine that this paper is in ways a culmination of a broader research project spanning multiple sectors, carried out by a multitude of actors. This might mean that a lot of data is not readily available, and you have adopted the approach that is present due to constraints of space. Nonetheless, I think that a more thorough discussion or visualization of the overall synthesis of the cases, and what lessons might be derived from them, is called for. Moreover, the models used early in the paper are not heard from again when we get to the end section. More reflection over your conceptualization towards the end of the paper is warranted in my view.

 

Thank you again, and I look forward to your response to these comments.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. I found it very well written, and appreciate the topic.

Thank you.

While I think that this manuscript has a lot of positives, I will limit my focus here to what I view as needing improvement. Most of my reservations about your manuscript stem from the case studies, their presentation, their richness, and how they are interwoven to make a concrete analysis and contribution to what is known about SIS and SDGS.

A new section 5 was added with the title “Individual cases summary”, where the individual case studies are introduced and the main ethical issues that were identified from each case study are listed, in order to better inform the cross-case study analysis that follows.

Also, a new subsection 6.7 was added, in order to collectively highlight the cross-case observations; the subsection was added at the end of the cross-case findings section.

In the methods section, you state that top-level nodes were decided on by the team, and lower level nodes were left to the coding process and the researchers involved in each case. I would have liked more details regarding this, as it is key to what direction the empirical analysis takes subsequently.  It might be appropriate to outline these top-level nodes, if they were decided a priori, as this constitutes an important building block of your research.

On page 6, details on the original high level nodes used for the qualitative analysis of the case study interviews, have been added.

In all of your case study presentations, I feel there is a lack of actual data from the cases. This problem grows in severity as one reads from case 1 to case 6.

This is now addressed in the new section 5, where individual case studies are introduced.

Overall, most of your discussion in the empirical section is recounting recent literature and UN SDG documents. I find quite limited coverage of the actual cases. While you argue that the cases are in alignment with this literature for the most part, I think you will need to provide a bit richer case material to make a convincing empirical section.

To increase the coverage of the case studies, in addition to their introduction in the new section 5, section 6.7 was added to provide some interesting collective observations to better inform the following discussion.

Also, at numerous occasions, the line is blurred between what is derived from the literature, and what is derived from the cases.

The new sections should now provide a clear perspective of what is derived from the cases.

This might be a result of the fact that the cases have been previously published elsewhere. I suggest a clearer delineation of what is literature and what is data. This might be done be sectioning off more strictly insights from literature from insights from data.

We have followed the approach of sectioning off insights from data (as indicated above) and have allowed the sections where literature is juxtaposed to the case findings to remain, as it should be clearer now.

Related to these issues, the discussion section, I feel, does not offer much in the way of the cross-case comparison promised early on in the paper. The majority of the discussion section focuses on reiterating statements from the empirical section, with many of the same arguments and intermingling literature being drawn up again. I think that this is more of an issue in the manuscript due to the fact that the empirics section draws so heavily on literature instead of drawing on the cases themselves. Since the case study itself reads like a combined data + analysis section, the discussion becomes more of an afterthought in my opinion.

We have added text to emphasise the contribution of our paper to both practice and theory and have provided additional detail of the design of the research protocol in section 3, to clarify the research design and directions.

Lastly, I did not find the conclusion to be that substantive. You have basically restated the aim of the study, but provide too limited discussion of the meaning of the analysis of the data. I imagine that this paper is in ways a culmination of a broader research project spanning multiple sectors, carried out by a multitude of actors. This might mean that a lot of data is not readily available, and you have adopted the approach that is present due to constraints of space. Nonetheless, I think that a more thorough discussion or visualization of the overall synthesis of the cases, and what lessons might be derived from them, is called for. Moreover, the models used early in the paper are not heard from again when we get to the end section. More reflection over your conceptualization towards the end of the paper is warranted in my view.

We have added to the conclusion and included further synthesis in the sections that you outlined.

Thank you again, and I look forward to your response to these comments.

Thank you for your feedback.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

I can state that this scientific article deals with very important problems. I checked this one.

I studied the submitted paper for publication. I am dealing with the ethical problems as well as with the Corporate Social Responsibility mainly in relation to the international management and entrepreneurship.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

I can state that this scientific article deals with very important problems. I checked this one.

Thank you.

I studied the submitted paper for publication. I am dealing with the ethical problems as well as with the Corporate Social Responsibility mainly in relation to the international management and entrepreneurship.

We have revised the paper to identify the ethical issues extracted from the case studies and the relevant observations regarding these issues from the cross-case analysis. This has been done to better inform the overall discussion.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

the paper is very well written and structured.

I would only recommend the development of the methodological part (3. Multi-Case Study Approach). It would be valuable to justify the methodology and define more precisely the research design. 

Good luck with the further stages of your project.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3

The paper is very well written and structured.

Thank you.

I would only recommend the development of the methodological part (3. Multi-Case Study Approach). It would be valuable to justify the methodology and define more precisely the research design. 

We have provided further justification for using a multi-case study approach. Specifically, the additional text outlines how the approach will help us pursue the relationships that underlie across the cases with regards to understanding ethical implications of SIS use. In addition, details of the research design, relevant to the research protocol and to the initial identification of nodes for the qualitative analysis, have been included.

Good luck with the further stages of your project.

Thank you.

 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.