Learning from the Future of Kuwait: Scenarios as a Learning Tool to Build Consensus for Actions Needed to Realize Vision 2035
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
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Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1. Thank you for your time again. Before I start rewriting the paper to as per your suggestions, I just wanted to make sure that there is no misunderstanding you still regard this nature type as Article but as per your suggestion I changed the nature-type from Article to Report. However, the editorial board of Sustainability did not accept this as report but did accept this form of publication as Perspective "Perspectives are usually an invited type of article that showcase current developments in a specific field. Emphasis is placed on future directions of the field and on the personal assessment of the author. Comments should be situated in the context of existing literature from the previous 3 years. The structure is similar to a review, with a suggested minimum word count of 3500 words.' Also as per your suggestion I consulted the editor and she agreed that the current format was a good fit for Perspective and did not need structural changes as per this format. If you can just confirmed that you comments are generated as per Perspective Nature-type as I feel they are still generated towards an Article format. Can you please confirm as all others have given their approval as per Perspective. I added as you requested a modular steps from Shell Global how to construct Scenario Planning in the appendix as requested.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
The authors are suggested to extend a deeper examination of this topic in relation to sustainable development for future paper
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2. Thank you for your time again. The nature type of this submission has been changed to Perspective rather than Article after recommendation from reviewer 1. The editorial board of Sustainability did accept this form of publication as Perspective "Perspectives are usually an invited type of article that showcase current developments in a specific field. Emphasis is placed on future directions of the field and on the personal assessment of the author. Comments should be situated in the context of existing literature from the previous 3 years. The structure is similar to a review, with a suggested minimum word count of 3500 words.' Also as per the suggestion I consulted the editor and she agreed that the current format was a good fit for Perspective and did not need structural changes as per this format. I added as requested a modular steps from Shell Global how to construct Scenario Planning in the appendix as requested.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The manuscript seems now more coherent with the nature of the article. The additions on the tribal background and demographics were very helpful to enhance the paper.
Aside from the minor grammatical and spelling corrections, I don't have any more objections.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3. Thank you for your time again. The nature type of this submission has been changed to Perspective rather than Article after recommendation from reviewer 1. The editorial board of Sustainability did accept this form of publication as Perspective "Perspectives are usually an invited type of article that showcase current developments in a specific field. Emphasis is placed on future directions of the field and on the personal assessment of the author. Comments should be situated in the context of existing literature from the previous 3 years. The structure is similar to a review, with a suggested minimum word count of 3500 words.' Also as per the suggestion I consulted the editor and she agreed that the current format was a good fit for Perspective and did not need structural changes as per this format. I added as requested a modular steps from Shell Global how to construct Scenario Planning in the appendix as requested.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
I believe that the authors have sufficiently improved the article.
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
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
This paper presents the Application of Shell Scenario Planning for propose three possible future scenarios of Kuwait.
Overall, I think the article is well-prepared. Please consider addressing the following comments:
From an editing point of view:
1. Please improve the Figures quality.
From the substantive point of view:
1. The authors should improve their explanation of the reasons for their choice of the Singapore, Lebanon, and Venezuela.
2. It is suggested to briefly present the Shell Scenario Planning approach and modelization’s steps, as well as the reasons for applying them in this study, supported by the relevant references.
3. Authors should consider whether it is interesting to include Hofstede Dimensions for Kuwait's to improve the explanation of the results.
4. The authors state “There are five possible strategies to fill the labor gap”, however, they present six strategies
5. Conclusions and Implications section should be improved. I recommend that the authors differentiate between implications for theory and implications for management.
Good luck!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer.
We were very grateful for the comments from the reviewer that made us refocus and rewrite the whole journal article into much better one and as we originally indented. As you suggested we rewrote first half. That is to use these scenarios as a learning tool to build up consensus to make required changes to realize the Vision 2035 for Kuwait. The reason why we use past of other countries rather than project past of Kuwait that is criticizing some factions of government which is unlikely to gain support of all or consensus for needed changes. Also there are censorship laws in Kuwait that do not allow such criticism. We refocused that scenarios into sustainable growth with needed structural changes, polar opposite or over use of resources and do nothing. We try to simplify all the inputs and as such we took out all cultural approaches which did not add much to the consensus building for needed changes. We also strengthen each historic past that formed each scenario significantly with more data to support and historic facts. We wanted to use these scenarios for focus group at the Arab Planning Institute but that would lead to at least one month delay and we did not get the editor permission to do that and it would have to be the input to the follow up paper along with other focus groups such as with Ministry of Finance and Kuwaiti Financial Authority. We will try to promote these scenarios to be used by Ministry of Finance road show to universities that they are currently doing in order to gain support for their indented introduction of Value Added Tax. I a budget analyst and head of division wrote similar paper for the Ministry of Finance of Iceland 22 years ago. One of the scenario came true almost 100% and predicted the bank crises of 2008. I would this article to be more of a warning so such crises could be averted. As you have seen the journal article has gone through English and formatting editing by MDPI author services. We are very proud of this article as we are sure it will have an impact. We will hopefully have the follow up article from the focus groups in couple of months.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of this paper is interesting. However, the authors did not fully manage to process it. It is necessary to make significant changes and additions to this paper. This paper looks to address a potentially interesting issue but the article suffers from an overall lack of structural clarity.
There is no need for doth in the Title.
There is no methodological core and no objective results related to methodological applications, as is appropriate in practice and scientific publication.
Some graphs are quite pale and with spilled letters. They should be more readable.
Graph number 4 is incomprehensible considering that there is no agenda that explains it
3.5.1 The Venezuela Story
This part is politically colored with no new data. Stuck in politics and history, without adequate literature for the field of work. Written like this, it is worthless for this paper
The conclusion is more general than specifically addressed. This part must be completely reworked since it has no clear conclusions and no implications.
It seems that the authors have to gathered some more materials for richer analysis. Authors should include more adequate literature in their research so that the paper can have reference research and conclusions
The paper contains information; however, it seems a bit messy, so the authors have to improve it.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
We were very grateful for the comments from the reviewer that made us refocus and rewrite the first half of the journal article into much better one and as we originally indented. That is to use these scenarios as a learning tool to build up consensus to make required changes to realize the Vision 2035 for Kuwait. The reason why we use past of other countries rather than project past of Kuwait that is criticizing some factions of government which is unlikely to gain support of all or consensus for needed changes. Also there are censorship laws in Kuwait that do not allow such criticism. We refocused that scenarios into sustainable growth with needed structural changes, polar opposite or over use of resources and do nothing. We try to simplify all the inputs and as such we took out all cultural approaches which did not add much to the consensus building for needed changes. We also strengthen each historic past that formed each scenario significantly with more data to support and historic facts. We wanted to use these scenarios for focus group at the Arab Planning Institute but that would lead to at least one month delay and we did not get the editor permission to do that and it would have to be the input to the follow up paper along with other focus groups such as with Ministry of Finance and Kuwaiti Financial Authority. We will try to promote these scenarios to be used by Ministry of Finance road show to universities that they are currently doing in order to gain support for their indented introduction of Value Added Tax. I a budget analyst and head of division wrote similar paper for the Ministry of Finance of Iceland 22 years ago. One of the scenario came true almost 100% and predicted the bank crises of 2008. I would this article to be more of a warning so such crises could be averted. As you have seen the journal article has gone through English and formatting editing by MDPI author services. We are very proud of this article as we are sure it will have an impact. We will hopefully have the follow up article from the focus groups in couple of months.
Many thanks again for your time and we are so greatful for your comments that were so helpful
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Using different frameworks and models to describe in detail three comparable places (Singapore, Lebanon, Venezuela), the manuscript illustrates the possible future scenarios for the State of Kuwait.
The manuscript seems more of a report or review rather than a research article. I believe MDPI offers these too (www.mdpi.com/about/article_types). At its current state, I cannot recommend it to be accepted.
The authors have done a lot of work in researching information about the three places (They may wish to list down all their resources in a table, if they wish, to show the thoroughness of their work). Nevertheless, the connection of these places’ detailed features with Kuwait's seems to be missing from the manuscript.
The reasons for choosing the three comparables are not very clearly expounded in the manuscript.
Even though the authors have mentioned a number of times that this is not a forecasting exercise, the conclusion still feels hanging even from the methodological innovation angle they have proposed at the beginning.
The language of the manuscript is clear, but there are still some grammatical and formatting errors in the body and references that needs to be improved.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
We were very grateful for the comments from the reviewer that made us refocus and rewrite completely the first half the journal article into much better one and as we originally indented. That is to use these scenarios as a learning tool to build up consensus to make required changes to realize the Vision 2035 for Kuwait which is sort of master plan that frequent changes of government and parliament prevented that need reforms have taken place . The reason why we use past of other countries rather than project past of Kuwait that is criticizing some factions of government which is unlikely to gain support of all or consensus for needed changes. Also there are censorship laws in Kuwait that do not allow such criticism. We refocused that scenarios into sustainable growth with needed structural changes, polar opposite or over use of resources and do nothing. We try to simplify all the inputs and as such we took out all cultural approaches which did not add much to the consensus building for needed changes. We also strengthen each historic past that formed each scenario significantly with more data to support and historic facts. We wanted to use these scenarios for focus group at the Arab Planning Institute but that would lead to at least one month delay and we did not get the editor permission to do that and it would have to be the input to the follow up paper along with other focus groups such as with Ministry of Finance and Kuwaiti Financial Authority. We will try to promote these scenarios to be used by Ministry of Finance road show to universities that they are currently doing in order to gain support for their indented introduction of Value Added Tax. I a budget analyst and head of division wrote similar paper for the Ministry of Finance of Iceland 22 years ago. One of the scenario came true almost 100% and predicted the bank crises of 2008. I would this article to be more of a warning so such crises could be averted. As you have seen the journal article has gone through English and formatting editing by MDPI author services. We are very proud of this article as we are sure it will have an impact. We will hopefully have the follow up article from the focus groups in couple of months.
Again we are so greateful for your comments and suggestion that resulted in much better paper we are very proud of.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Best of luck in future papers.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is now much clearer. However, its general structure still does not fit the nature/type of research article, for this reason I cannot recommend it to be accepted. They may consider to change the nature/type of the paper to a report or review. The author may wish to discuss this with the editors, if possible.
The work has undoubtedly presented a lot of information/data about their case and the three comparables; however, it has not explained clearly how the information was processed. They claim that “the main methodological contributions are to intertwine stakeholder theory and cultural approaches into the Royal Dutch Shell scenario formations.” However, it is not clearly explained how these theories were actually combined and used in the work. For instance, there is no discussion in the literature review about how the critical interpretive synthesis and other theories were used by similar studies. What makes the work original to fit the research article category.
Alternatively, if the aim of the paper is “to form a learning tool for consensuses making of what are the needed actions of today for desired outcome in the future”, the format of a report or review seems to already suited for the purpose. In fact, this work, as the author said, is a prelude to focus group sessions with important planning bodies in Kuwait.
Another disjoint I observed is that section 3.4 focuses mainly on Kuwait’s demographic challenges but the succeeding discussion about the 3 places have hardly discussed the issue with depth.
Minor observation: Some references do not seem to correspond to what the text is talking about.
