Being an Emotional Business Leader in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Emotions during a Crisis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

it is a good paper now. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer very much for his feedback and for previous comments if he/she also participated in the previous round of revisions. We feel that thanks to your comments the paper has become more valuable.

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Very interesting and important manuscript. Thank you for the opportunity to review the work. The authors designed the manuscript in a very interesting way, which makes it easy to read.

The strength of the manuscript is the research gap and methodology. The work lacks a solid review of the literature in relation to the latest studies, especially from the years 2021–2023.

The issue of emotional intelligence is currently very fashionable, which is why I recommend that this aspect be refined. There is quite a lot of literature in the work from 1990, 1999, and 1994, which are very old. I recommend removing them and replacing them with the latest studies.

At work, the conclusion is also too short. I recommend developing them, especially in relation to the purpose of the work. You can also refer to quality 4.0, which refers to soft skills, i.e., emotional intelligence.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of emotion experienced by company executives and their employees during the Covid epidemic.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with business leaders from Italian firms to accomplish this. The authors report findings indicating that some business leaders did not prioritize emotions in their management practices, as if they were a secondary concern or something they needed to disregard in order to accomplish their managerial position as business leaders. In contrast to other leaders, some shown a willingness to sympathize with their followers, convey their vision and sentiments, and build positive and constructive relationships amid the covid crisis. According to the author, the second group of leaders possessed a higher level of emotional intelligence than the first group (EI).

While I am motivated by the results and convinced by the authors' logic in posing the research question, I would have preferred to see research findings from a larger sample of business leaders and to see the authors use research tools designed to estimate emotional intelligence and leadership style. The data reported here are based on a limited sample size of businesses (n=11) and business leaders (n=38).

Perhaps the authors could consider presenting their findings as a pilot study in the form of a short or rapid communication in an appropriate journal; however, I am afraid that this work is constrained by its experimental design and cannot achieve the level of quality required for publication in sustainability.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents an approach to the concept of leadership seen from the emotional perspective (EI) of the interviewees in the study conducted by the authors.

In the theoretical section, I recommend to the authors other papers published in the same journal, which reported on the concept of sustainable leadership, to position the leader in an organization, a concept that can be correlated to the crisis period to which the authors refer, by the chosen approach. In this way, the list of theoretical references that highlight the topic addressed in the paper will be improved.

For the Results section, I recommend that authors renounce at the cited used in the generic form: “They said: ...”, “One of the interviewed said: ...”, “One of the CEO said:…”, “the interviewee told us:… ”,“ one of the CEO of Italian enter-223 prize factories said:… ”, etc .;  where the authors are anonymous. The information resulting from the interview can be expressed synthetically in the form of paraphrases of the interview, and at the end of the paper the authors can attach a table with the quotes now included in the text, and containing a minimal reference on their author, name of the leader or organization participating in the interview.

Table 1 does not contain its source, or a note if it was created by the authors. Section 6 on practical implications can be included in the discussion section, as a follow-up to the comments on the results obtained, and to which can be added the limitations noted by the authors.

The conclusions section requires a broader development, based on the study conducted and outlining future study directions on the topic. The paper needs a major revision of the structure of the presented topic, for publishing.

Reviewer 3 Report

The study is very interesting and timely. There is still too little research on the subject of leadership and emotions. In this respect, this approach is of great importance. With regard to the research questions, questions were asked more indirectly about the use etc. and about emotions in leadership. That's OK. But here a narrative interview might have brought better results to light. A semi-structured interview leaves less freedom for openness. Regarding the evaluation method, it should be stated more clearly which theoretical method was followed.

Reviewer 4 Report

The article deals with a very important and interesting topic, which is emotional intelligence, especially in times of a pandemic. The article is very interesting, unfortunately it has many shortcomings. The strong way of the paper is interesting title and idea. Weakness point is methodology presentation, literature review and conclusion.

The abstract is very well described, although there is no information that the authors used the CIT method. In case of introduction lack information about the aimd of the paper. Literature review is poor base on fresh publications connected with the topic.  Methodology is very poor base on figures. I propose to create more figures.

I propose to put detail information about the size of tested company (were they big, small or average?) Authors put the information in 144row that M= 3286; SD= 7210 - what does this abbreviations mean? Authors write that: "The thematic areas investigated in our interview concern the experiences of leaders in times of crisis" - its very interested so I propose to give example of questions that they ask leaders. I propose to built the table to the CIT method as well as use statistical tests that are typical to this method. I know CIT method and I propose to work harder with this method. Create the table with categories and statistical data. Conclusion is very poor. I propose to relate them to research and to the future. Lack hypothesis.