Defining a Social Role for Ports: Managers’ Perspectives on Whats and Whys
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper presented how decision-making individuals perceive the different social roles of ports，This is a very interesting study.As a revealing outcome of the study, it presented how managers see the importance of accepting the leadership role.
1. However, the conclusions of these interviews are very simple. They do not reveal the relationship between port roles from different perspectives, nor do they analyze the conflicts between different port roles. As an interview study, we need to deeply analyze the changes in port roles and the reasons for the changes.
2. I think this study is too simple. In the era of sustainable development, it may be more important to analyze the sustainable transformation of ports. At the same time, what is the difference between the port role from the perspective of managers and that of others? What makes these differences? These need to be discussed.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The answers to each are below and referred to in the manuscript according to the numbering in these answers.
Comment 1.1
- However, the conclusions of these interviews are very simple. They do not reveal the relationship between port roles from different perspectives, nor do they analyze the conflicts between different port roles. As an interview study, we need to deeply analyze the changes in port roles and the reasons for the changes.
Reply: Additional text was added to the conclusions to ensure more depth is provided to the points observed from the data collection (please refer to the comments showing where this item was answered in the manuscript). However, one point needs to be clarified: Based on the exploratory nature of this study and the interpretive perspective of the themes, the main goal was to give voice to what managers consider important before suggesting conclusions based on the authors' points of view about what interviewees' thoughts could mean in practice.
The conflicts between port roles are a great suggestion, as different cargo handling can impact the region's social fabric. Although it was never thought to have this analysed, the overall study has a quantitative phase where the difference between ports can be revealed with the support of statistical data. If the reviewer feels comfortable with this suggestion, the comments will be used as further research to publish another paper.
Comment 1.2:
2. I think this study is too simple. In the era of sustainable development, it may be more important to analyze the sustainable transformation of ports. At the same time, what is the difference between the port role from the perspective of managers and that of others? What makes these differences? These need to be discussed.
The sense of simplicity from the reviewer is understandable, as the paper has focused on the social dimension of sustainability and not on the broader sustainability analysis. That is why Table.1 in the manuscript tries to assess how ports have left behind the social dimension, intending to show how the literature on the social approach needs to be improved. In this sense, Lim et al. (2019) are important to prove how the gap exists and needs to be addressed. There is additional text included in the manuscript to address this comment.
The reviewer's comment on the other perspectives is outstanding and definitely needs to be considered in further research. This was a core element discussed during the whole PhD project, and it was limited to the managers' view for time and budget constraints. In the conclusions, there is an emphasis on the need to look at other perspectives, and this will definitely be part of a broader research effort in case this project is extended.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
This study aims to explore the social role of ports and the importance and reasons for their adoption. There are not many papers on the social role of ports. Therefore, this is a meaningful study. However, I have some comments as follows.
1. The interviewees in this paper are managers of ports in Brazil, and sampling strategies are adopted for managers. Since managers have different functions, it is suggested to classify managers and adopt sampling strategies in different categories.
2. The logic of this article needs to be carefully revised, and the content of the last two chapters of the article is a little repetitive.
3. A brief description of the conclusions and innovations of this study can be found in the conclusion section.
4. This paper introduces the importance of adopting the social role of ports, and can be further introduced in detail. How can managers achieve a win-win situation in the face of the social role of ports and the economic development of ports.
5. The authors are suggested to improve the literature review by citing more related papers. Just list several as follows.
Exploring the governance dilemma of nuclear wastewater in Fukushima: A tripartite evolutionary game model. Ocean and Coastal Management 225, 106220.
Evaluation of Ship Pollutant Emissions in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. 2022; 10(9):1206.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The answers to each are below and referred to in the manuscript according to the numbering in these answers.
Comment 2.1
- The interviewees in this paper are managers of ports in Brazil, and sampling strategies are adopted for managers. Since managers have different functions, it is suggested to classify managers and adopt sampling strategies in different categories.
The sampling strategy adopted was convenient sampling, ensuring that only individuals with the power to influence the organisations' decisions were selected. The comment above is great and more information was added about managers' profiles in Table 2. However, it is not possible to classify managers in different clusters, and this information is not available and was not the focus of the paper. In the future, if further research is developed on this topic, the segregation of ports and managers according to the nature of their operations or positions will be considered in the analysis.
2.2 The logic of this article needs to be carefully revised, and the content of the last two chapters of the article is a little repetitive.
To differentiate the two last chapters, two sentences were added in the beginning of section 4.2.
2.3 A brief description of the conclusions and innovations of this study can be found in the conclusion section.
More information was added to the conclusions to ensure this comment is addressed. It is a very valuable comment as it adds more depth to the analysis and offers opportunities to learn about the study's outputs.
2.4. This paper introduces the importance of adopting the social role of ports, and can be further introduced in detail. How can managers achieve a win-win situation in the face of the social role of ports and the economic development of ports.
Reply to this comment added under conclusions (Section 6) with a paragraph discussing how the win-win objective can be achieved. Thank you very much for suggesting it.
2.5
The authors are suggested to improve the literature review by citing more related papers. Just list several as follows.
Exploring the governance dilemma of nuclear wastewater in Fukushima: A tripartite evolutionary game model. Ocean and Coastal Management 225, 106220.
Evaluation of Ship Pollutant Emissions in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. 2022; 10(9):1206.
The second literature paper was included in the manuscript as it seems more aligned with the ports' actions than the first. Changes were also performed in the numbering of the references in the reference list.
Reviewer 3 Report
The article meets all the substantive requirements. Although I think that the article should include the following aspects:
1. the abstract lacks a clearly articulated purpose of the article.
2. the lack of a clearly formulated research hypothesis.
3. No indication of the application value of the research, both in the theoretical and practical parts.
Congratulations on choosing an interesting research topic.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The answers to each are below and referred to in the manuscript according to the numbering in these answers.
3.1 the abstract lacks a clearly articulated purpose of the article.
More was added and adjusted in the abstract to clarify the paper's objectives.
3.2 the lack of a clearly formulated research hypothesis.
The research questions were included in the text to ensure the hypothesis of this paper becomes clearer to the reader. Thank you for pointing that out.
3.3 No indication of the application value of the research, both in the theoretical and practical parts.
More information was included in the conclusion section to ensure the practical benefits of the paper can be shared with the readers.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank the author for his modification and improvement. However, there are still many aspects that can be improved in the paper, especially the discussion of investigation analysis and conclusions
Author Response
Following further analysis of the comments, a review of the discussion was produced with information re-written and more references added to the section. One of the points that the author tried to improve was the inclination towards a more 'sustainability' approach to ensure the paper matches the journal's requirements.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for addressing my comments from the previous draft. I think this draft is a significant improvement over the previous draft. An important contribution of the article is to build an analytical framework for the social role of port managers, but the author did not explicitly propose this framework in the article. I suggest you build an analytical framework to enhance the theoretical contribution of the article.
Author Response
Dear reviewer and editor(s),
First of all, my sincere apologies for the late reply. Part of it was due to personal reasons but another part was related to careful thought around the comments provided in this and the previous rounds.
The figure included in the manuscript was developed based on group thinking and the writing of another sub-section in the discussion.
Thank you very much for the comments and I hope this suffices the requirements of the journal.
Kind regards,
Eduardo
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
