The Rise of MCS and EMA in the Sustainable Field: A Systematic Literature Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Better themes of the systematic literature and further development of avenues for future research. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We are grateful for your time in reviewing our paper. Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled "The rise of MCS and EMA in the sustainable field: A systematic literature analysis". Your affirmation and encouragement give us confidence and motivation to do our research well. 

In order to ensure the integrity and richness of the research, we followed your advice, revised the language, also increased the relevant literature, and added the Scopus Database to the new manuscript.

Have a nice day!

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

First of all, congratulations on the work presented.

This article addresses a very current and relevant topic. However, I will mention some points that can be improved.

Although the authors justify the option for the web of science database, I think that the inclusion of the Scopus database would be relevant. The use of a second database would broaden the sample and increase the interest in the research.

The article does not mention any keywords. 

In Figure 1. in the word "Inclusion", the "n" is missing. Furthermore, the figure should not be broken between pages.

In lines 152, 192, 193, and 208 remove the yellow.

They could include other analyses, for example, most cited authors. This analysis would allow us to know which authors are more relevant or have achieved more notoriety.

I wish you the best of luck with the article.

Kind regards,

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer: 

We are grateful for your time to review our article. And your affirmation of our work gives us a lot of motivation.  Your professional suggestion provides us with the direction for improvement, as you are concerned, there are several problems that need to be addressed. According to your nice suggestions, we have made corrections to our previous draft, the detailed corrections are listed below:

Point 1:

“Although the authors justify the option for the web of science database, I think that the inclusion of the Scopus database would be relevant. The use of a second database would broaden the sample and increase the interest in the research.”

Answer:

The point you mentioned is indeed our shortcoming and adding the second database could make our research completer and more interesting. So, we have increased the Scopus database according to your suggestion and described the detailed search process in the method section of the article.

“Then, the search process also was conducted in the Scopus database. In this database, search within “TITLE-ABS-KEY (“Environmental Management Accounting” OR “EMA” AND “Sustainability Performance”)” and 8 papers were found. 5 papers limited in recent five years, and 2 articles in the aimed subject area (Business, Management and Accounting). By using the same procedure, 12 papers were found related to “Management Control Systems” OR “MCS” AND “Sustainability Performance”, 6 articles limited in recent five years, and belong to the aimed subject area (Business, Management and Accounting).” (Line 154-160)

Point 2:

“The article does not mention any keywords”.

Answer:

Dear reviewer, we were really sorry for this mistake, thanks for your reminder. And this is because when we submitted this draft, the website required us to put this information in another file. As followed your reminder, we have added the keywords in our new draft. Thank you so much.

“Keywords: Sustainability Performance, Environmental Management Accounting, Management Control System” (Line 20-21)

Point 3:

“In Figure 1. in the word "Inclusion", the "n" is missing. Furthermore, the figure should not be broken between pages.”

“In lines 152, 192, 193, and 208 remove the yellow.”

 

Answer:

Dear reviewer, thanks for your careful checks. We are sorry for this mistake; we have made the corrections of the word “inclusion” and adjusted the size of the figures to make sure all the figures in our article are not broken between pages. We also removed the yellow that you mentioned.

Point 4:

“They could include other analyses, for example, most cited authors. This analysis would allow us to know which authors are more relevant or have achieved more notoriety.”

Answer:

Dear reviewer, your suggestion is very useful for our research, this suggestion could help us to expand the scope of our analysis. We followed your suggestion and added the analysis of citations, due to some literature published in recent years, we consider that would affect the citation, we only listed authors with more citations.

“In addition to the relevant characteristics of the article itself that can reflect the research trend, the citation of the author cannot be ignored. In these identified articles, Wijethilake, Munir, and Appuhami (2016) [25] are the most cited authors, their article is 96 times cited in all databases, followed by Younis and Sundarakani (2019) [11], 81 times cited; Hosoda (2018) [22], 58 times cited, and Gunarathne, Lee, and Hitigala Kaluarachchilage (2020) [16], 50 times cited. From the article’s citation, we could know which author’s research has received more attention and provided more reference value for other scholars.” (Line 221-228)

 

We would like to express our great appreciation to you for your comments and suggestions on our article.

Have a nice day!

Reviewer 3 Report

The article addresses the theme: “The rise of MCS and EMA in the sustainable field: A systematic literature analysis”. Although the theme is interesting, I have major concerns regarding the article. Please see below my comments:

 

1.      Introduction:

 

·        The research questions are not aligned with the abstract. In the abstract, the authors argue that they review the “theoretical and methodological approaches, research themes, and contexts”. These four points are partially different from the five research questions;

·        Also, it seems that there is a contradiction. While in the abstract, the authors argue that the contexts are analysed, in the introduction there is a focus on the manufacturing industry.

 

 

2.      Literature review:

·        When there is a full transcription of a part of a text, the page number has to be included in the citation (see lines 67-68);

·        The authors should better develop the literature review on MCS in the context of EMA;

·        See lines 70-77: no author is cited.

·        The authors have a research question focusing on theories. However, no theories are addressed in this section

 

 

3.      Research methodology:

·        In my opinion, not using the scopus database is a major flaw. Arguing that WOS  can provide “better” articles can be a debatable argument. Furthermore, avoiding the repetition of articles is no justification.

·        The authors should be more rigorous by better explaining how they did the searches. For example, did the authors use the grammatical conjunctions “AND” or “OR” in those searches

·        The authors do not mention any dates: when they retrieved the sample; which years were analysed, and why only five years.

·        In resume, this section should be developed, and all the procedures justified. See for example “Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ 2021;372:n71. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n71”

 

 

4.      Results:

·        The results do not follow the research questions (which differ from the points mentioned in the abstract). In the abstract, the authors claim to assess the adopted methodologies. However, at first stance, the authors only dedicate four lines to it (see lines 167-170). Then, there is a section focusing on the “Overview of research methods and sample”.

·        In section 4.3, the authors mix data collection techniques such as interviews with methods such as case studies, even though interviews may be used in case studies, something which can potentially bias the results.

·        Section 4.4 is confusing. On the one hand, there is a focus on sustainability performance. On the other hand, there is no contextualisation regarding why the authors aim to assess the triggers. It seems there is a lack of focus.

 

5.      Discussion:

·        This section is more a “concluding remarks” section rather than a “discussion one”. In fact, the authors only propose three cues for further research, which is very scarce.

6.      There is no conclusion. The authors should go back to the papers’ goal and the research questions and make some remarks about them.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are grateful for your time to review our article.

Since your comments are important and valuable, I made a more detailed answer in the Word File. Please see the attachment.

 

Have a nice day~

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you very much for your improvements.

After reading the improvements, I liked the final version, and the article quality was increased.

Kind Regards,

 Rui Bertuzi

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your affirmation of our work. This article became better with your help and advice. 

Thank you so much.

Have a nice day~

Reviewer 3 Report

The article addresses the theme: “The rise of MCS and EMA in the sustainable field: A systematic literature analysis”. Despite the improvements made to the article, I have still noticed some major flaws.

The structural and methodological flaws I detected in the first version are still present (although to a less degree). Again, the English language needs significant editing.

 

 

1.     Research methodology:

·         The methodology should allow anyone to replicate the search, i.e. it should lead to the same number of articles. I tried to do it for the web of science database, and I could not get the same sample. For example, did the search cover all fields or only the title, keywords and abstracts? All the steps should be better described. At the same time, using the Prisma 2020 flow diagram could better depict those steps;

·         The authors still do not mention the date when they retrieved the sample;

·         If the authors search the keyword “sustainability performance”, they might lose some papers in the process. They should also try searching for “sustain* Performance”. Probably, the final sample will be larger.

 

2.     Discussion:

·         This section is essential. The authors should go back to the results to suggest further avenues. For example, what theories could be used? Furthermore, what future research was suggested in the papers pertaining to the sample. Were those suggestions already addressed?

·         The authors state the study’s limitations in the discussion section, something which should be depicted in the conclusion’s section. Also, the adopted methodology is again addressed in the discussion (lines 323-341).

 

 

3.     The conclusion is very poor. Again, the authors should go back to the papers’ goal and the research questions and make some remarks about each of them. Show the main contributions. For example, what themes should be explored in the future?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are grateful for your time to review our article again. Thanks for your patience in explaining the problems we did not answer well.

To provide detailed answers, we upload the attachment, and please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

The article addresses the theme: “The rise of MCS and EMA in the sustainable field: A systematic literature analysis”. The article was improved and is, in my opinion, suitable to be published, as long as the authors do extensive proofreading.