Informative Transparency on Entrepreneurship by Spanish Local Governments

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the paper you provided for consideration in the Journal Sustainability examines the role of Spanish city councils in promoting entrepreneurship as a strategy for local sustainability. It utilizes a content analysis of the websites of 50 city councils from 2015-2019 to assess the evolution of information disclosure on entrepreneurship. The study considers various population, economic, and political factors to understand their impact on this disclosure. However, the paper needs rigorous enhancement to meet the standards of the scientific writing.

Following improvements should be done in this manner:

First, there needs to be done an extension to now included literature review, which will explicitely address the identified gaps in previous studies and from which your hapotheses arise.

Second, missing is the discussion and implication section, which will strengthen the discussion by linking back to your theoretical framework/literature review more explicitly, thereby highlighting how your findings advance the current understanding and results of previous studies. Discuss the practical implications for policymakers, local government officials, and stakeholders in entrepreneurship.

Third, address limitations and future research possibilities. Clearly outline the limitations of your study, such as its geographic and temporal scope, and suggest avenues for future research. This could include longitudinal studies, comparative analyses with other countries or regions, or exploring other dimensions of sustainability.

Fourth, enhance Conclusion as now they are mainly just a reply of results. Ensure that your conclusion succinctly summarizes key findings, their implications, and the contribution of your work to the field of sustainability and entrepreneurship.

Wish you good luck with your paper!

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for all the improvements offered to the work, we hope the corrections are to your liking. Many thanks for everything

Questions and answers Reviewer 1.

First of all, it is necessary to make an extension of the literature review now included, which will explicitly address the gaps identified in previous studies and from which their hypotheses arise.

We have added the following updated references, following your recommendations.:

Rodrigues, V.F.; Souza, R.A.R. de EXPERIMENTAÇÃO DA METODOLOGIA ATIVA COMO FACILITADORA DE APRENDIZAGEM NO CURSO SUPERIOR DE EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA / EXPERIMENTATION OF THE ACTIVE METHODOLOGY AS A LEARNING FACILITATOR IN THE HIGHER PHYSICAL EDUCATION COURSE. Brazilian Journal of Development 2021, 7, 4550–4560, doi:10.34117/bjdv7n1-307.

Silva, S.R.; Marques, C.S.E.; Galvao, A.R. Where Is the Rural Creative Class? A Systematic Literature Review About Creative Industries in Low-Density Areas. JOURNAL OF THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY 2023, doi:10.1007/s13132-023-01341-6.

Mustakangas, E.; Vihinen, H. How Do Municipal Strategies Work in Rural Development: A Critical Realist Case Study. J Rural Stud 2024, 106, 103215, doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103215.

Zhang, L.; Yuan, W. Can Local People’s Congress Supervision Improve the Expenditure Behavior of Local Governments? Evidence from Provincial Budget Review. Heliyon 2023, 9, e22395, doi:10.1016/J.HELIYON.2023.E22395.

Sedmihradská, L. Budget Transparency in Czech Local Government. Procedia Economics and Finance 2015, 25, 598–606, doi:10.1016/S2212-5671(15)00774-1.

Benito, B.; Guillamón, M.D.; Ríos, A.M. Transparency and Efficient Management in Local Governments. Cities 2021, 115, 103234, doi:10.1016/J.CITIES.2021.103234.

Tavares, A.F.; Camões, P.J.; Martins, J. Joining the Open Government Partnership Initiative: An Empirical Analysis of Diffusion Effects. Gov Inf Q 2023, 40, 101789, doi:10.1016/J.GIQ.2022.101789.

Secondly, the discussion and implications section is missing, which will strengthen the discussion by linking it to your theoretical framework/literature review more explicitly, thus highlighting how your findings advance current understanding and results of previous studies. Discuss practical implications for policymakers, local government officials, and entrepreneurship stakeholders.

Added point 4, Discussion and implications.:

4. Discussion and implications

The present study attempts to fill the gap that exists in the research on the information that municipalities disseminate about entrepreneurship through their websites, a topic little studied to date.

The work focuses on the study of the evolution of the degree of dissemination of information on entrepreneurship of the 50 Spanish municipalities corresponding to the period 2015-2019, in order to analyze the level of information they disseminate through their web pages, as well as its possible explanatory factors. The content analysis technique was used based on a dichotomous scale to collect information from the web pages of the municipalities of the sample under study based on the 5 established axes of analysis. Results were obtained that show an increase in the amount of information disclosed from 2015 to 2019 of 0.7% for the general information axis, 4.86% for the information axis on resources and support for the entrepreneur, 4.92% for the information axis on active entrepreneurship, 4.67% for the information axis on digital entrepreneurship and 2.86% for the information axis on dissemination and communication with the entrepreneur.

In order to investigate the explanatory factors that determine this increase in disclosure in 2019, the values ​​of the 2019 index were used as dependent variables and social factors (population size and dependent population), economic factors as independent variables. (municipal debt, institutional capacity and unemployed population) and political factors (political competition and electoral participation). To do this, a cluster analysis and an analysis of variance were carried out, with the intention of being able to verify the existence of an association between the proposed conditions. The findings allow us to accept all the hypotheses raised in the research except H2, H7, H8 and H9.

It can be said, therefore, that the dissemination of information about entrepreneurship can be a powerful tool for local economic development and the promotion of a solid business ecosystem. However, its success depends on the effective implementation of policies that promote inclusion, equity and long-term sustainability.

Third, address limitations and future research possibilities. Clearly describe the limitations of your study, such as its geographic and temporal scope, and suggest avenues for future research. This could include longitudinal studies, comparative analyzes with other countries or regions, or exploring other dimensions of sustainability.:

Has been added:

On the other hand, it should be noted that this work has several limitations that also imply more future lines of research for its authors. Firstly, the inevitable subjective judgment of the researchers inherent in obtaining the information collected from the city council websites, as well as the dichotomous scale of the disclosure index, may not capture the quality or depth of the information disclosed. by the municipalities. Furthermore, the sample under study is small, limited only to the 50 municipalities of the Spanish provinces, leaving out the rest of the Spanish municipalities and this sample may not be representative of the entire country. On the other hand, we are aware of the limitation of the chosen time period. However, despite the aforementioned limitations, the results are interesting enough to justify and expand the research to carry out longitudinal studies and comparative analyzes with other countries or regions and considering their evolution over time.

Improve the conclusions, since they are now mainly just a results answer. Make sure your conclusion succinctly summarizes the key findings, their implications, and the contribution of your work to the field of sustainability and entrepreneurship.

We have incorporated:

Spanish municipalities are aware and concerned about the aspects that have to do with entrepreneurship in the municipalities. The dissemination of information about entrepreneurship has experienced a notable increase in the amount of information disseminated about entrepreneurship during the period between 2015 and 2019. With these results of this work, it is concluded that municipalities can now focus their practices and policies on the dissemination of information about entrepreneurship with respect to the factors that do or do not have an effect on the level of disclosure.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I found the article interesting. It's an interesting topic that will attract many researchers. I appreciated the research methodology: content analysis technique, disclosure index, cluster analysis, and the fact that a variety of explanatory variables from social, economic, and political dimensions were used to test the hypotheses and to capture the complexity of the phenomenon.

General recommendations:

•             Provide a clear research question and objective. A clear research question and objective should be stated in the introduction section and revisited in the discussion and conclusion sections.

•             Improve the structure and coherence of the article. For example, the introduction section is too long, the literature review section is not well-organized and does not provide a clear theoretical framework, and the discussion and conclusion sections are too brief and do not provide a clear answer to the research question or objective.

 Specific recommendations:

·        Rephrase the title of the article to make it more concise and clearer, as it can better specify the context of the study. The article doesn't analyze the implications resulting from the promotion of entrepreneurship by local governments, doesn't quantify the outcomes of the promotion of entrepreneurship by local authorities, such as increasing the visibility of local businesses, boosting turnover, or increasing the number of employees by local companies. Instead, the study focuses on the level of disclosure of information related to entrepreneurship. Alternative title could be: Can Spanish local governments promote local sustainability by disclosing information about entrepreneurship?/ How Spanish city councils use entrepreneurship to foster local sustainability / Comparative analysis of the level of disclosure of information related to entrepreneurship by Spanish local governments in the context of promoting sustainability .

·        I recommend stating the limitations of this article - can be future research directions. E.g, The data compared are old (2015 vs 2019), even if they are justified. From 2019 until now, I think the level of disclosure of information has increased even more; the sample size of 50 Spanish municipalities may not be representative of the whole country or other regions, the disclosure index is based on a dichotomous scale, which may not capture the quality or depth of the information disclosed by the municipalities, the study only focuses on the information disclosed on the websites of the municipalities, which may not reflect their actual practices or policies on entrepreneurship promotion, the study does not consider the impact or effectiveness of the information disclosure on the entrepreneurial outcomes or behaviors of the citizens.

·        Use more recent and relevant literature. The article relies on literature that is outdated or not directly related to the topic of entrepreneurship disclosure by local governments. For example, some of the references are from the 1990s or early 2000s, and some are about corporate social responsibility, e-government, or sustainability, which are not the same as entrepreneurship disclosure.

Editing recommandation:

-        The way of citation in the text must be revised – for example:

o   line of text  106 – „ [34]; [35],” – must be „[34,35]”;

o   line of text 125-126 „Thus, studies such as that of [41] use municipal debt as an explanatory factor” – it can be „Thus, municipal debt can be used as an explanatory factor [41].”

o   Row 131 – „[44] and [19] failed to find any statistically significant differences” – it can be „Similar research found no statistically significant differences [19,44]”; text line 197 and so on.

Thank you very much!

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for all the improvements offered to the work, we hope the corrections are to your liking. Many thanks for everything

Questions and answers Revisor 2

           Provide a clear research question and objective. A clear research question and objective should be stated in the introduction section and reviewed in the discussion and conclusion sections. Contributing:

Consequently, and considering municipalities as a fundamental factor supporting entrepreneurial work, the following research questions are posed: (1) Do Spanish town councils disclose information about entrepreneurship? and, (2) What are the determinants of this disclosure? In order to answer this question, the objective of this study is twofold. On the one hand, analyze the information that Spanish city councils provide to entrepreneurs on their institutional web portals by calculating an information disclosure index for the period between 2015 and 2019. On the other hand, throughout the 2019 financial year, They will study a series of factors determining the disclosure of this type of information. This aims to answer the second research question of this work, contributing to the generation of knowledge in this matter in the field of local administrations in Spain. The reason is that the dissemination of entrepreneurship by local administration is a topic that has received little academic attention, despite its importance due to its impact on citizens.

Improve the structure and coherence of the article. For example, the introduction section is too long, the literature review section is not well organized and does not provide a clear theoretical framework, and the discussion and conclusion sections are too short and do not provide a clear answer to the question u research objective.

We have restructured what the reviewer requests in all the sections he points out

Rephrase the title of the article to make it more concise and clear, as it can better specify the context of the study. The article does not analyze the implications resulting from the promotion of entrepreneurship by local governments, it does not quantify the results of the promotion of entrepreneurship by local authorities, such as increased visibility of local businesses, increased turnover or increase in the number of employees of local companies. Instead, the study focuses on the level of disclosure of information related to entrepreneurship. The alternative title could be: Can Spanish local governments promote local sustainability by disseminating information about entrepreneurship? / How Spanish city councils use entrepreneurship to promote local sustainability / Comparative analysis of the level of disclosure of information related to entrepreneurship by Spanish local governments in the context of promoting sustainability.

We thought the reviewer's contribution was very good, we thank him very much and we have changed the title to:

INFORMATIVE TRANSPARENCY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY SPANISH LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

I recommend indicating the limitations of this article; may be future research directions. For example, the data compared is old (2015 vs 2019), although justified. From 2019 until now I think the level of information disclosure has increased even more; The sample size of 50 Spanish municipalities may not be representative of the entire country or other regions, the disclosure index is based on a dichotomous scale, which may not capture the quality or depth of information disclosed by the municipalities, the study It only focuses on the information disclosed on the websites of municipalities, which may not reflect their actual practices or policies on promoting entrepreneurship, the study does not consider the impact or effectiveness of the disclosure of information on business results or behaviors. of the citizen.

Returning to commenting on the improvements that the reviewer offers to the work, the following have been included:

On the other hand, it should be noted that this work has several limitations that also imply more future lines of research for its authors. Firstly, the inevitable subjective judgment of the researchers inherent in obtaining the information collected from the city council websites, as well as the dichotomous scale of the disclosure index, may not capture the quality or depth of the information disclosed. by the municipalities. Furthermore, the sample under study is small, limited only to the 50 municipalities of the Spanish provinces, leaving out the rest of the Spanish municipalities and this sample may not be representative of the entire country. On the other hand, we are aware of the limitation of the chosen time period. However, despite the aforementioned limitations, the results are interesting enough to justify and expand the research to carry out longitudinal studies and comparative analyzes with other countries or regions and considering their evolution over time.

Use more recent and relevant literature. The article relies on literature that is outdated or not directly related to the topic of entrepreneurship disclosure by local governments. For example, some of the references are from the 1990s or early 2000s, and some are about corporate social responsibility, e-government, or sustainability, which are not the same as entrepreneurship disclosure.

We have included these updated references related to entrepreneurship.

Rodrigues, V.F.; Souza, R.A.R. de EXPERIMENTAÇÃO DA METODOLOGIA ATIVA COMO FACILITADORA DE APRENDIZAGEM NO CURSO SUPERIOR DE EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA / EXPERIMENTATION OF THE ACTIVE METHODOLOGY AS A LEARNING FACILITATOR IN THE HIGHER PHYSICAL EDUCATION COURSE. Brazilian Journal of Development 2021, 7, 4550–4560, doi:10.34117/bjdv7n1-307.

Silva, S.R.; Marques, C.S.E.; Galvao, A.R. Where Is the Rural Creative Class? A Systematic Literature Review About Creative Industries in Low-Density Areas. JOURNAL OF THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY 2023, doi:10.1007/s13132-023-01341-6.

Mustakangas, E.; Vihinen, H. How Do Municipal Strategies Work in Rural Development: A Critical Realist Case Study. J Rural Stud 2024, 106, 103215, doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103215.

Zhang, L.; Yuan, W. Can Local People’s Congress Supervision Improve the Expenditure Behavior of Local Governments? Evidence from Provincial Budget Review. Heliyon 2023, 9, e22395, doi:10.1016/J.HELIYON.2023.E22395.

Sedmihradská, L. Budget Transparency in Czech Local Government. Procedia Economics and Finance 2015, 25, 598–606, doi:10.1016/S2212-5671(15)00774-1.

Benito, B.; Guillamón, M.D.; Ríos, A.M. Transparency and Efficient Management in Local Governments. Cities 2021, 115, 103234, doi:10.1016/J.CITIES.2021.103234.

Tavares, A.F.; Camões, P.J.; Martins, J. Joining the Open Government Partnership Initiative: An Empirical Analysis of Diffusion Effects. Gov Inf Q 2023, 40, 101789, doi:10.1016/J.GIQ.2022.101789.

Editing recommandation: 2

- The way of citation in the text must be revised – for example:

o line of text 106 – „ [34]; [35],” – must be „[34,35]”;

o line of text 125-126 „Thus, studies such as that of [41] use municipal debt as an explanatory factor” – it can be „Thus, municipal debt can be used as an explanatory factor [41].”

o Row 131 – „[44] and [19] failed to find any statistically significant differences” – it can be „Similar research found no statistically significant differences [19,44]”; text line 197 and so on.

We have corrected the text as proposed by the reviewer

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

according to the improvements made in the article, I suggest it to be accepted.

Wish you good luck with the article!