The New SWOT for a Sustainable World

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear  Author,

I am sending the review in the attachment.

Best wishes,

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to improve our manuscript. We implemented all the changes requested. You can see the comments below, and changes implemented in the attachment. 

Best regards.

The authors.

Literature review

Literature studies are exhaustive, based on a thorough analysis of the current literature on the issue.

 

R: Thank you for the supportive comment

 

Research Methodology

In my opinion, the research sample should be presented in more detail. The author provides information that 25 interviews were conducted with the managerial staff. How was this sample constructed, how did the author reach the respondents? what form of sampling did he use (e.g. purposive sampling ”snowball sampling”)?

 

R: we agree with the reviewer. Due to the exploratory nature if this study, we followed a non-probabilistic purposive sampling. This information is now on lines 196 to 198.

 

 

What is also needed is the structure of the research sample (what positions were taken by the respondents) and what companies they represented (size, sector etc). It seems important because the research results so far show that there are different approaches to strategic issues in large, medium-sized and small enterprises.

 

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now present a detailed description of the sample. Please see lines 198 to 221

 

 

The research tool requires a more detailed presentation in the methodological part. It would be advisable to include information on how it was built, how many questions it contained, etc.

 

R: Thank you for this important recommendation. To address these issues we created a new section 2.3. and an Appendix to provide more detail about the questionnaire and the procures.

 

Conclusions

The presented study was not representative, so I suggest you narrow down your conclusions by adding statements, e.g. (in the surveyed companies).

R: Thank you for the suggestion. We now picked relevant information from the interviews and integrated them in the conclusions. Please see paragraphs 1 to 5 of the conclusions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I like the main ideas around this interesting article, and I think its findings will be relevant to the Journal's community and its potential readers. However, I think that some problems should be solved before publishing.

Regarding the Introduction Section, I will try to introduce better why you decided to expand the SWOT matrix and how you link it with sustainability. Moreover, I would also highlight why you chose to investigate such a managerial tool and support line 33 with some references. Finally, after introducing the literature gap and before stating the implications of your research, I encourage you to add a few lines to anticipate the methods employed and the achieved results in this section. I think these changes would positively help the reader.

Second, I think that the literature review, as it is developed at this time, is a little bit vague. There is a robust historical approach, which risks making the reader uncomfortable comprehending your work's positioning. I suggest you investing more time to create a better narrative and link it with the journal's aim and scope. At the moment, it is quite strange that you are trying to publish in a journal related to open innovation, but “innovation” is not explicitly addressed in your work. This issue also regards your work references, which should be positioned in the Journal debate and could include other publications from other MDPI Journals.

For example, you can mention how digital transformation and industry 4.0 are pushing companies to rethink their business models in a more sustainable way:

• Braccini, A.; Margherita, E. Exploring organizational sustainability of industry 4.0 under the triple bottom line: The case of a manufacturing company. Sustainability 2019, 11, 36.

• Tirabeni, L.; De Bernardi, P.; Forliano, C.; Franco, M. How Can Organisations and Business Models Lead to a More Sustainable Society? A Framework from a Systematic Review of the Industry 4.0. Sustainability 2019, 11, 6363.
  
  

Or you can consider how policy efforts such as the United Nations SDGs are requiring such shifts and asking companies to implement system thinking and value co-creation processes:

• Chesbrough, H. W. (2007). Business model innovation: It’s not just about technology anymore. Strategy and Leadership, 35(6), 12–17. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570710833714.
  
  
• De Bernardi, P., & Azucar, D. (2020). Innovative and Sustainable Food Business Models. In Innovation in Food Ecosystems(pp. 189-221). Springer, Cham.
  
  
• Stubbs, W., & Higgins, C. (2018). Stakeholders’ Perspectives on the Role of Regulatory Reform in Integrated Reporting. Journal of Business Ethics, 147(3), 489–508. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2954-0.

 

Then, the Methodology section should be strengthened. Who conducted the interviews? Who was involved by them, and how you selected them? Were the interviews exploratory in their nature or confirmatory? Were the interviewees made aware of the aim of the research? How much did they last? All these questions should be better highlighted or addressed to improve your work and give it more soundness and reliability. It is very important to explain these aspects since you based the text mining on interviewees' answers and having the possibility to generalize the findings of that phase, ensuring that the answers freely emerged from respondents.
I would also like to see a brief methodological paragraph dedicated to the text mining analysis. Even if a different software was used, you could take inspiration from Paragraph 3.3 of this article:

• Massaro M, Secinaro S, Dal Mas F, Brescia V, Calandra D. Industry 4.0 and circular economy: An exploratory analysis of academic and practitioners' perspectives. Bus Strat Env. 2020;1– https://doi.org/10. 1002/bse.2680

 

Concerning the methodology, it is also unclear to me how Paragraph 2.1, "Variables", is related to your research design.

 

Finally, I suggest turning the key findings of Paragraph 5.2 into the theoretical and practical implications of your work, creating a narrative around them rather than presenting them as isolated bullet-points.

 

Good luck with this promising work!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to improve our manuscript. We implemented all the changes requested. You can see the comments below, and changes implemented in the attachment. 

Best regards.

The authors.

 

I like the main ideas around this interesting article, and I think its findings will be relevant to the Journal's community and its potential readers. However, I think that some problems should be solved before publishing.

R: Thank you for the supportive comment and for the suggestions.

Regarding the Introduction Section, I will try to introduce better why you decided to expand the SWOT matrix and how you link it with sustainability. Moreover, I would also highlight why you chose to investigate such a managerial tool and support line 33 with some references.

R: We agree with the reviewer. We now inserted the references.

Finally, after introducing the literature gap and before stating the implications of your research, I encourage you to add a few lines to anticipate the methods employed and the achieved results in this section. I think these changes would positively help the reader.

R: thank you for the suggestion. We now integrate in the introduction a brief description of the methods employed. Please see introduction last paragraph.

Second, I think that the literature review, as it is developed at this time, is a little bit vague. There is a robust historical approach, which risks making the reader uncomfortable comprehending your work's positioning. I suggest you investing more time to create a better narrative and link it with the journal's aim and scope.

R: We agree with the reviewer. We now reorganized the literature review for more focus and clarity

At the moment, it is quite strange that you are trying to publish in a journal related to open innovation, but “innovation” is not explicitly addressed in your work. This issue also regards your work references, which should be positioned in the Journal debate and could include other publications from other MDPI Journals.

For example, you can mention how digital transformation and industry 4.0 are pushing companies to rethink their business models in a more sustainable way:

• Braccini, A.; Margherita, E. Exploring organizational sustainability of industry 4.0 under the triple bottom line: The case of a manufacturing company. Sustainability2019, 11, 36.
• Tirabeni, L.; De Bernardi, P.; Forliano, C.; Franco, M. How Can Organisations and Business Models Lead to a More Sustainable Society? A Framework from a Systematic Review of the Industry 4.0. Sustainability2019, 11, 6363.
  
  
• Or you can consider how policy efforts such as the United Nations SDGs are requiring such shifts and asking companies to implement system thinking and value co-creation processes:
• Chesbrough, H. W. (2007). Business model innovation: It’s not just about technology anymore. Strategy and Leadership, 35(6), 12–17. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570710833714.
  
  
• De Bernardi, P., & Azucar, D. (2020). Innovative and Sustainable Food Business Models. In Innovation in Food Ecosystems(pp. 189-221). Springer, Cham.
  
  
• Stubbs, W., & Higgins, C. (2018). Stakeholders’ Perspectives on the Role of Regulatory Reform in Integrated Reporting. Journal of Business Ethics, 147(3), 489–508. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2954-0.

 

R: Thank you for the suggestions and the references. They are now incorporated in the references list, as well the references to Industry 4.0 and SDGs in section 2.2.

Then, the Methodology section should be strengthened. Who conducted the interviews? Who was involved by them, and how you selected them? Were the interviews exploratory in their nature or confirmatory? Were the interviewees made aware of the aim of the research? How much did they last? All these questions should be better highlighted or addressed to improve your work and give it more soundness and reliability. It is very important to explain these aspects since you based the text mining on interviewees' answers and having the possibility to generalize the findings of that phase, ensuring that the answers freely emerged from respondents.

Concerning the methodology, it is also unclear to me how Paragraph 2.1, "Variables", is related to your research design.

 

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now present a detailed description of the sample and the procedures. Please see lines 196 to 260

Furthermore, we created a new section 2.3. and an Appendix to provide more detail about the questionnaire and the procures (and the role of the variables section).

I would also like to see a brief methodological paragraph dedicated to the text mining analysis. Even if a different software was used, you could take inspiration from Paragraph 3.3 of this article:

• Massaro M, Secinaro S, Dal Mas F, Brescia V, Calandra D. Industry 4.0 and circular economy: An exploratory analysis of academic and practitioners' perspectives. Bus Strat Env. 2020;1– https://doi.org/10. 1002/bse.2680

 

R: Thank you for the suggestion and for the reference, which is now incorporated in the references. We extended section 4 to provide more detailed elements about text mining analysis. Please see the two first paragraphs of section 4.

 

Finally, I suggest turning the key findings of Paragraph 5.2 into the theoretical and practical implications of your work, creating a narrative around them rather than presenting them as isolated bullet-points.

R: We agree with the reviewer. We now move those points to section 6 and created a narrative. Please see section 6 paragraphs 1 to 5.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, the paper is very ambitious. 

However, i would see a more in depth analysis of the literature. Probably, your main contribution to the debate is related to the advancement of 2030 Agenda. In this sense, the paper requires an integration of the existing literature about the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs. 

On the point, you could consider the following papers:

Sachs, J. D., Schmidt-Traub, G., Mazzucato, M., Messner, D., Nakicenovic, N., & Rockström, J. (2019). Six transformations to achieve the sustainable development goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(9), 805-814.

Diaz‐Sarachaga, J. M., Jato‐Espino, D., & Castro‐Fresno, D. (2018). Is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) index an adequate framework to measure the progress of the 2030 Agenda?. Sustainable Development, 26(6), 663-671.

Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., & Lafortune, G. (2020). Speaking truth to power about the SDGs. Nature, 584(7821), 344.

Pizzi, S., Caputo, A., Corvino, A., & Venturelli, A. (2020). Management research and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a bibliometric investigation and systematic review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 124033.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to improve our manuscript. We implemented all the changes requested. You can see the comments below, and changes implemented in the attachment. 

Best regards.

The authors.

 

However, i would see a more in depth analysis of the literature. Probably, your main contribution to the debate is related to the advancement of 2030 Agenda. In this sense, the paper requires an integration of the existing literature about the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs. On the point, you could consider the following papers:

Sachs, J. D., Schmidt-Traub, G., Mazzucato, M., Messner, D., Nakicenovic, N., & Rockström, J. (2019). Six transformations to achieve the sustainable development goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(9), 805-814.

Diaz‐Sarachaga, J. M., Jato‐Espino, D., & Castro‐Fresno, D. (2018). Is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) index an adequate framework to measure the progress of the 2030 Agenda?. Sustainable Development, 26(6), 663-671.

Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., & Lafortune, G. (2020). Speaking truth to power about the SDGs. Nature, 584(7821), 344.

Pizzi, S., Caputo, A., Corvino, A., & Venturelli, A. (2020). Management research and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a bibliometric investigation and systematic review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 124033.

R: Thank you for the suggestions and the references. They are now incorporated in the references list, as well the references to SDGs in section 2.2.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I really appreciate the effort you put into improving your publication. I think the overall quality of the paper increased a lot.

Considering also editorial needs, I only suggest solving some minor English typos; otherwise, for me, the paper can be published.

 

Good luck and I wish you all the best!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for you comment.

Happy new year!

The Authors.

Reviewer 3 Report

well done

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for you comment.

Happy new year!

The Authors.