Zombification and Industry 4.0—Directional Financialisation against Doomed Industrial Revolution

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting your research, which I enjoyed reading. Generally speaking, the paper has been well structured and well-argued. Many insights that the authors have built on, most acquired from previously published literature--and part of which has come from the authors themselves, as I can guess--appear to have served the arguments well.

I see the paper's merits and trust that it would likely become acceptable, provided that the authors revise it diligently. I will be specific on what should be delivered in what follows.

First, I found many places a plethora of texts, sometimes too dense, with too much arguing all packed in a narrow space, making it really hard to follow.  That's why some revising efforts will be appreciated by the audiences. One of such places is v. Noisy crisis management on pages 14-15, right before the Discussion section. Please spend some time going over all other similar texts and identify where the authors could improve clarity and readability.

Second, while the paper has been doing a pretty good job on what it (and its sister papers) promised, it has been totally quiet on the extremely critical aspect of today's business world, and perhaps the whole world: climate breakdown. This silence has given me the feeling that for the paper, the particular concerns as stated by the authors have been isolated from the living and ecological environments. In fact, the authors understand well that this is not true. And for much of the discussion has dealt with the cultural spheres of today's business world, I would introduce a work proposing a principle for this particular issue, which the paper can leverage to align it with the prevailing concern of humankind: https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/EBL/article/view/15872; and I sincerely hope that this reference item will be of help.

Finally, I tend to agree with many issues that the authors put forward, I have seen that the authors have currently been omitting a major risk of today's economy: policy failure. And investments in science, tech and business innovations will need to ensure the lowest risk of policy failures because the consequences will become devastating if investing and over-investing turn out to be out of context, and this is what the paper looks to advocate as well. To this end, I refer the authors to the following view for the sake of clarity: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0281-4, and this could be useful for your Discussion as part of it has, thus far, been repetitive.

All in all, this is a good paper, and some revisions will only make it more convincing and useful.

Best wishes and I look forward to reading the revised submission.

Author Response

The author of the paper is very grateful to the Reviewer in highlighting the ways on how to elevate the quality level of the paper.

On improving clarity and readability:

• in section on altered economic wisdoms, the line of thinking was shortened and rephrased to have a clearer argumentation;
• in section on noisy crisis management, the wording has been revised accordingly to get a shorter and clearer argumentation;

On the role of climate change

• true, the financial sector should get some directions in better serving the transition to a circular and greener economy itself, to this end, the issue of such structural shift has been added to: (i) the industry 4.0 part, see rows of 97-104th, (ii) the discussion part by also referring to the paper the Reviewer recommended, see rows 731-736th – a reference was also added to the paper on „an eco-surplus business culture” by Vuong (2021).

On the role of policy failure:

• the paper touched upon the issue of policy failuer when it devoted attention to policies having a distortive impact on healthy competiton by contributing to the side effect of creating and strengthening zombification;
• true, more research is needed on potentially arising policy failures. To this end, I will continue the research on zombification later on. For instance, the present paper does not apply a specific econometric model developed to deliver the goods. The current paper will be followed by further analysis which tries to overcome the many problems associated with the availability of granular data and their reliability issue as well. Many papers admitted that available data, that might be of interest pertaining non-financial firms, have many shortcomings in this respect (since we are dealing with a more like secular phenomena, the available time series for 10 years at best do not seem to be as conducive as it would be required) and we are at the very beginning of such new research avenue to be complemented by reasonable econometric or basic regression analysis for instance, later on (e.g., building partly on CompNet as well as Compustat to carry out correlation analysis, regression analysis, using VAR model or panel database analysis as GMM to see the extent to which policies and initiatives over excessive and zombified financialisation influence the complex process of Industry 4.0 and its unfolding – potentially influencing the chances of a more environment-aware circular economy).
• In the discussion part, a reference was also made to the Nature Human Behaviour article;

Reviewer 2 Report

The strength of the article is a very interesting topic, well-done literature review, and an introduction. Unfortunately, a very big disadvantage of the work is the lack of any methodology. The authors do not specify in the material what is innovative and what gap they fill. The study also lacks any hypotheses or goals stated in the introduction. The authors write in lines 56–60 that: "It asks whether there is an intimate link between zombifying financialisation and industry 4.0 development." Unfortunately, the authors did not confirm this issue with research. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the work requires refinement in terms of methodology, preferably statistics.

Summing up, I think that the topic of the work is very interesting. The presented data is interesting, but it is necessary to refine the collected results with statistical research. I believe that such data will be valuable for work.

Author Response

Our gratitude goes to the reviewer in pinpointing the weakness of the paper.

The present paper had a humble implicit goal, namely to be a sort of pioneering work, identifying and opening up a new field of research with respect to the systemic consequences of a disharmony between the financial sector and the real economy in the context of the unfolding Industry 4.0. It is an effort to better understand many particular phenomena the literature tried to address so far but only without deciphering the complex context.

The paper aimed therefore at touching upon the complex context by not focusing on only one or two particular factors with an econometric arsenal but digging deeper by building on all the publicly available and still reliable data source and empirical backing. In this way, as other reviewers of the paper confirmed – both from the financial sector and the academic world – that the intimate link between zombifying financialisation and industry 4.0 development is not a superficial conjecture merely, but a well-founded reality.

True, the paper does not apply a specific model developed to deliver the goods. The current paper will be followed by further analysis which tries to overcome the many problems associated with the availability of granular data and their reliability issue as well. Many papers admitted that available data, that might be of interest pertaining non-financial firms, have many shortcomings in this respect (since we are dealing with a more like secular phenomena, the available time series for 10 years at best do not seem to be as conducive as it would be required) and we are at the very beginning of such new research avenue to be complemented by reasonable econometric or basic regression analysis for instance, later on (e.g., building partly on CompNet as well as Compustat to carry out correlation analysis, regression analysis, using VAR model or panel database analysis as GMM to see the extent to which policies and initiatives over excessive and zombified financialisation influence the complex process of Industry 4.0 and its unfolding).

Still, the introduction, the materials and methods as well as the very end of the discussion parts have been revised to emphasise more our aim and the issues mentioned above.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

Thank you very much for your revised submission, which I am delighted to read. I particularly like your elaborations on arguments concerning the departure of the financial system and its products from the realities of Industry 4.0.

The paper will supposedly become a good read for further research works.

Congratulations on the nicely done work.

I am pleased to recommend it for publication in its current form.

Best wishes,

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thank you for your improving. I really like to read this paper. Thank you for very interested topic.