EU Maritime Industry Blue-Collar Recruitment: Sustainable Digitalization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. There are some suggestions that could make the paper clearer and more in-depth.

Introduction: The introduction is too long. I suggest dividing it into the introduction and the literature review. I suggest clarifying the research gap, theoretical and practical contributions of the paper and its objectives. I also suggest explaining how the paper will fill the research gap(s) at the end of the introduction. I also suggest creating a separate heading for the literature review and expanding on it in depth to highlight the interesting points in the paper.

There are some paragraphs without references. All information in the paper should be cited.

The methodology is not clear. I suggest rewriting it in a simpler and clearer way and adding more details.

Hypothesis testing: I suggest integrating the hypothesis testing with the analysis results.

Discussion: I suggest rewriting the discussion critically and explaining the correlations and differences between the results and previous studies.

Conclusion: I suggest making 3 separate headings for theoretical implications, practical implications, limitations and future studies and rewriting this section again.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Paper needs proofreading.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper entitled “EU Maritime Industry Sustainable Recruitment: A Digitalization Case Study”. I recommend major revision if the author(s) can improve the paper for further consideration. Kindly consider my comments as preliminary and subject to further updates. Here are the reasons behind my decision:

The title:

The title of the manuscript need to be revised to specifically reflect the main objective of the study. Authors stated” case study” what it is mean? After reading the through manuscript, it does not seem that it is a case study!

Abstract:

 The abstract lacks the key results of the study.

Introduction:

Research gap and research objectives are not clear, its imprecise. However, I am also not sure about the motivation of the study and what research gap author(s) trying to bridge here. It seems that author(s) did not use references to justify the research gap. The style of the Introduction must be coherent, and it should explain what the problem is, what has been researched in previous academic literature in this area, and actually gap exists. Further, how this study fulfils this research gap.

Literature review and hypotheses development

·         Hypotheses development in its current dorm is weak. It needs to strengthen, It would be better to rely on established theories to build hypotheses!

·         Hypotheses development should be merged under the literature review section.

·         The conceptual framework of the study is not included.

Methodology

·         The sampling is not clear, and how the authors selected participants should be justified. The authors failed to clarify the sample and population. Authors just said that the study relied on group of Romanian shipbuilding and ship-repair technicians and engineers!

·         How we can ensure that sample of 183 responses is statistically appropriate sample size? Author/s did not give us interpretation.

·         There is a privacy issue in this study, authors stated that “from the online platform, workers names have been removed …….” Why authors asked for participants’’ names?!!!

Results

·         Authors stated in part “4.1. Overview”  that “This chapter presents the findings from the study….” This in not “chapter”. Anyway this part needs to be removed! This is not a dissertation!

·         Is there a difference between technicians and engineers responses?

·         A table illustrating the results of testing hypotheses needs to be included.

Discussion:

For theoretical contribution, more precise information is needed on how exactly the findings contribute to the theory and overall body of knowledge. What new information are you providing to EU Maritime Industry’ managers that they are not already aware of?

The theoretical and practical implications

The theoretical and practical contributions of the study are not included, they need to be enriched with specific and more implications to theory and practice.

Limitations and further research

Limitations and further research is also required.

References:

·         In line 112, the author/s mentioned “Bucak et al.” is this the suitable citation style for  Sustainability Journal?!! The same in line 116 “Preto-Fernández et al.”!!

·         Overall, references need to be enriched and revised throughout the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language is required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper covers a literature review and an analysis of surveys of Romanian shipbuilding and ship-repair technicians using IBM SPSS Statistics software

The paper is original, however, I have noticed some weaknesses. First, at the end of Introduction, authors should also mentioned about their statistical research, not only on the literature survey. 

Second, my request concerns the hypotheses verification. Hypothesis H1 is partially supported, Hypothesis H2 is strongly supported, but what about the Hypotheses H3 and H4 ? supported or not? it is not explained. 

Third, the chosen references are suitable, however, I would ask authors to expand the list of references, for example to reveal a similar research in other countries. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper has become clearer and more in-depth. All the suggestions have been reflected in the paper. I have no further comments or questions.

Author Response

Thank you for your review. It helped our paper showcase our findings.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Figure 1 needs to be revised ( testing hypotheses is not a statistical technique) or removed as it adds no value!. 

 

Two figures still needed; one to present the conceptual framework of the study and showing the research hypotheses, and another figure to present the final results of the study.

 

Authors mentioned that "advanced statistical methodologies were employed", however, statistical techniques used are a very traditional ones!!!

 

Authors stated that hypothesis 3 was strongly supported and hypothesis 4 was partially supported. How readers understand the variation between strongly supported and partially supported?! This needs to be explained well 

 

Another table is needed to present the each research hypothesis and its result.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor 

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx