Disclosing the Tacit Links between Risk and Success in Organizational Development Project Portfolios

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for this opportunity to review this paper. The paper has some unique contributions to managing project portfolios in a sustainable manner. Please find below some of my suggestions to improve the manuscript.

1. The introduction section argues that it is necessary to manage portfolios in a sustainable way. It would be better to connect this sustainable angle to the discussion and conclusion section as well.
2. The Social Representation Theory (SRT) section is currently in the research methodology section. It would be better placed towards the end of the literature review section. The authors can mention the theoretical grounding methodology in research design, however better to introduce the theory in the literature review section.
3. line 230 - Can the authors also include details of the type of project the professionals belong to? Kaminsky (2021) notes including details of respondents can help readers make sense of the discussion.
4. It is better to support the findings with a similar discussion in the literature. For example, one of the quotations is "we have to give them something […] they must receive benefits." To support this, the authors can use the 'give and take' strategy observed in projects from the work of Ninan et al. (2019).
5. On a minor note, there are some grammatical errors that need to be corrected. For example, the sentence in lines 99-102 is a long sentence that could be split into two to improve readability.

In sum, the manuscript has some useful contributions, however, requires some refining. All the best forward.

References
1. Kaminsky, J. (2021). Who Are We Talking To? Situating Construction Engineering and Management Knowledge. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 147(2), 06020003.
2. Ninan, J., Mahalingam, A., & Clegg, S. (2019). External stakeholder management strategies and resources in megaprojects: an organizational power perspective. Project Management Journal, 50(6), 625-640.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

An article, in my opinion, of fairly high maturity. There are two basic issues to be addressed, however.

First of all, the qualitative approach is extremely sensitive to insufficient methodological rigor. The authors of the manuscript, generally speaking, go in line with basic best practices in this area. That said, they omit a number of details and threats to validity. Thus:

• Selective mention of a single limitation within conclusions is definitely not enough. The study has a very strong geographical focus, which introduces a generalizability issue at the outset. Please discuss threats to validity (especially external) in detail within a dedicated subsection.
• The article does not elaborate on the domain-related diversity of the projects covered by the analysis. Here we are potentially dealing with another generalizability issue.
• Replicability of the research will be severely hampered because neither the coding method used is featured nor the questionnaire form is included as an appendix.

Regarding the second issue, the implications discussed within sections 5.x are largely related to theory. The article is built around a highly applicable subject. So what about managerial implications?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the interesting manuscript with a title " Disclosing the Tacit Links between Risk and Success of Organizational Development Project Portfolios”. The manuscript presented with a good level of the presented research. The research introduction, research design and methods presented are sufficient. I suggested authors several comments/remarks for the improvement the presented manuscript. The comments for the manuscript are follow:

1. In Figure 1 the extraction of the classification on the selected subject can by presented;
2. I recommended the authors to check the context of the information presented in the Figure 1 and Figure 2.
3. Literature analysis from the selected problem of the topic with a new literature source (2022 year) can be presented. The literature review and reference list can be improve.

Reviewer

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing the comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Previously reported issues were addresed adequately.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the the presented answers and corrected manuscript. I suggest you more better reflect the content of the Objectification of ‘Project portfolio risk’ for organizational development project portfolios considering the constructs ‘risk factors’ and ‘project portfolio success’ where are shown in the Figure 2.

Reviewer