Reflection of Digitalization on Business Values: The Results of Examining Values of People Management in a Digital Age

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Your paper represents is a technically sound design and evaluation of a study carried out in Slovakia, and limited to Slovakia's metropolitan area. 

Therefore I believe that the content might be of interest to comparable countries and regions. 

However, I also think that there is a fundamental problem with your research design: if you ask people today, if their values are going to change, they will reply by no. Value change is a gradual process which usually happens by being part of a social/economical/ecological movement at large scale in society. People gradually start giving up old values for adopting new/different ones, sometimes without even realizing. 

Therefore, I believe that a research based on observation over several (5) years would be much more appropriate to investigate your topic. 

Author Response

Thank you for the review. Thank you for appreciation of the relevance of the content to the regional area. We agree, that creating new value system is a long-term adopting process. The research project focused on reflection of digital innovations on value systems has been designed for 3 years, and we find reasonable to continue even after, bringing tendencies as well. We find important to research the value systems, since they are the source of certainty in very uncertain digital era.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 Within text references should be revised as to be in line with the MDPI guidailances.

For the measurement index, references should be provided. If it is your own, the items should be included in the appendices.

Please provide more information on the study population, sampling and data collection process.

Table 3: there is not provided an explanation for the colours used and the meaning of the figures.

Line 274: KMO

Table 4: the same observation as for table 3. Moreover, the link between the results presented within the table and the analysis below should be better outlined.

Author Response

Thank you for the review. We have considered all your recommendations relevant and we adjusted the paper as follows:

The text references have been revised according to the MDPI guidelines.  

The measurement index has been explained line 214-220.

The sample information have been added into the structured for table: line 203    .

The colours used in table 3. were used inappropriately and have caused confusing interpretations. Initial aim was to emphasise greater values in findings, however, they were not used in all of the cases. Therefore, we have decided not to use the colours for highlighting. Based on the notes of other reviewers, we have also reorganized the reference and table layouts (information in tables have been added). line 268

Thank you for noticing the typo in KMO in line 286

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, thank you for submitting your manuscript to Sustainability. I believe that the manuscript tackles a worthwile subject, but can be improved regarding the following aspects:

- The introduction is quite long and reads partially more like a definitory section. Therefore, the authors should a) write a shorter introduction that highlights the theoretical contribution, reseach gap, and relevance and b) develop a background section for their paper. As several parts have not been referenced yet, I suggest the following references. These could be used especially to stengthen the research gap:

Birkel, H. S., Veile, J. W., Müller, J. M., Hartmann, E., & Voigt, K. I. (2019). Development of a risk framework for Industry 4.0 in the context of sustainability for established manufacturers. Sustainability, 11(2), 384.

Kaasinen, E., Schmalfuß, F., Özturk, C., Aromaa, S., Boubekeur, M., Heilala, J., ... & Mehta, R. (2020). Empowering and engaging industrial workers with Operator 4.0 solutions. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 139, 105678.

Kiel, D., Müller, J. M., Arnold, C., & Voigt, K. I. (2017). Sustainable industrial value creation: Benefits and challenges of industry 4.0. International Journal of Innovation Management, 21(08), 1740015.  

Machado, C. G., Winroth, M. P., & Ribeiro da Silva, E. H. D. (2020). Sustainable manufacturing in Industry 4.0: an emerging research agenda. International Journal of Production Research, 58(5), 1462-1484.

Müller, J. M., & Voigt, K. I. (2018). Sustainable industrial value creation in SMEs: A comparison between industry 4.0 and made in China 2025. International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing-Green Technology, 5(5), 659-670.

Romero, D., Wuest, T., Stahre, J., & Gorecky, D. (2017). Social factory architecture: social networking services and production scenarios through the social internet of things, services and people for the social operator 4.0. In IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (pp. 265-273). Springer, Cham.

Stock, T., Obenaus, M., Kunz, S., & Kohl, H. (2018). Industry 4.0 as enabler for a sustainable development: A qualitative assessment of its ecological and social potential. Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 118, 254-267.

- The sample selection and representativeness could be better described and discussed.

- Table 3: Consider changing the layout, as the first to rows are very hard to read (maybe rotate by 90 degrees).

- The discussion with extant literature (please see suggestions above) and theoretical contribution (too short in comparison to managerial implications) must be strengthened.

- In the limitations and conclusion, the generalizability of the sample outside of Slovakia must be better discussed.

Author Response

Thank you for the review. We have considered all your recommendations relevant and we adjusted the paper as follows:

We agree with the note on missing introduction with the focus on research gap. We have restructured the first chapter, developed introduction followed by background section, line 55. Thank you for suggesting relevant literature sources, they have been of a great help in strengthening the research ga.

We agree with poor explanation of the research sample, we have resolved the insufficiency. We have added a table to provide more structed information on the sample and included more characteristics: line: 207.

We have adjusted the contend of Table 3 (now table 5) to make it properly legible.

We have emphasised the research gap, supported the discussion with extant literature, as suggested Line: 350, 363-370, 372, 403

We agree with the note, that the research results is relevant to comparable countries and regions. This is one of the limitations, which needs to be mentioned. We have added this note into limitation section. Line:: 455-458

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the changes made by the authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your revisions. I believe several aspects have been improved, only chapter numbers are wrong (e.g., after 2. comes 1.1), but this is a task for final production and editing, not a content-related comment.