Challenges, Open Innovation, and Engagement Theory at Craft SMEs: Evidence from Indonesian Batik

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

I hope you are doing well and in good health

Thank you for all of your efforts to provide comments and improve the quality and content of our manuscript. Here is our response to your comments:

1. Reviewer : You should clarify the contributions of the paper which are not elaborated well in the current paper. You can talk about the following contributions: What insights can you provide based on your finding? Do they push forward our understanding? What should we do with your research? Do you have any suggestions to improve the current regulation or practice?

Author: We add it on the line 104-112 and line 784-787. In detail we have presented it in section 5.3

2. Reviewer: The paper seems to claim causality but does not discuss the potential endogeneity issue and its remedies sufficiently. The lack of participation of stakeholders may well be optimal and rational (endogenous decision) for them. Therefore it may be the government’s job to provide incentives for them to be more engaged.

Author:  We add it on the line 748-754, 777-778, and 796

3. Reviewer: See Dang et al. 2018. Measuring Firm Size in Empirical Corporate Finance. Journal of Banking & Finance, 86:159-176. After all it is the most significant variable in most studies alike. The responses you collect may be different depending on different measures of firm size, which is very common in this area.

Author: We add it in line 667-670 and 711-713

4. Reviewer: The endogeneity problem can be driven by unobservable firm/CEO characteristics you need to discuss. See Coles and Li, 2019. Managerial Attributes, Incentives, and Performance and Coles and Li, 2019. An Empirical Assessment of Empirical Corporate Finance

Author:  We add it in line 748-754 and 777-778

5. Reviewer: Try to avoid long sentences and vague words. Use short, precise, and concise sentences and be more straightforward. The last section of conclusion should summarize all your findings, their implications to researchers and practitioners, future direction for research, limitation of the current study, etc. You need to seriously proofread the paper and extend and update your references. 

Author:  We already fix it

We hope this response has been meet with your expectations. We are very happy can collaborate with you.

Thank you

Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors investigate the challenges faced by batik SMEs and perform the test on their proposed model that combines open innovation and engagement theory. Generally, the problem is clearly presented and significant. However, there are a few problems the authors should address.

1. The word "Open innovation" is not clearly defined and exemplified. The authors should provide the specific innovation or technologies that can be adopted to improve batik market in Indonesia.
2. The authors introduced two hypotheses but no clear evidence to confirm their validity. 
3. More details about the sample, measurement method, data collection of the results shown in Fig.2-7 are required.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

I hope you are doing well and in good health

Thank you for all of your efforts to provide comments and improve the quality and content of our manuscript. Here is our response to your comments:

1. Reviewer: The word "Open innovation" is not clearly defined and exemplified.

Author: we add it on the line 51-55

2. Reviewer: The authors should provide the specific innovation or technologies that can be adopted to improve batik market in Indonesia.

Author:  We add it in the table 1 (line 758-760)

3.  Reviewer: The authors introduced two hypotheses but no clear evidence to confirm their validity. 

Author:  Thank you for your comment; however, since this is a qualitative study, we believe that there is no need for hypothesis, so we have removed the two hypotheses.

4. Reviewer: More details about the sample, measurement method, data collection of the results shown in Fig.2-7 are required.

Author:  This information came from interviews with 27 Indonesian local government officers (1 person per province). We used a closed questionnaire to inquire about the challenges that batik SMEs face in their regions (line 269-274)

As for measurement, we used descriptive analysis (line 318-320).

We hope this response has been meet with your expectations. We are very happy can collaborate with you.

Thank you

Best regards

Reviewer 3 Report

The article suggests a current and attractive topic for the academy. The effort made is evident, but it requires very deep adjustments in the exposed theory and a greater understanding of open innovation theory and Engagement Theory.

I hope you find the comments below helpful:

Abstract:

must sell the idea of the manuscript; the content is very simple and does not indicate results.

Keywords:

It is necessary to review them does not reflect the most important of the study.

Manuscript

You must carefully review the English. The manuscript has grammar and spelling errors. Preferably ask for help from an English native speaker.

Introduction

1. In general terms, should review the introduction, the exposed literature of Open Innovation, Engagement Theory and Craft SMEs is poor. It shows few references and much-unsupported text that for a prestigious journal is incompatible. It is necessary to review the references used because their content becomes questionable by not having an adequate balance between texts by recognized experts and new researchers and stronger arguments related to the topic that is expected to be found.
2. Line 24. It is correct? "Due to a large number of SMEs in Indonesia, namely 64,194 million units in 2018". 64,194,000,000? I think there is a grammatical error!

Theorical Framework

3. The model presented does not have theoretical support, especially about items 2 to 10. These have not been exposed in the literature. If consider stakeholders' issue, must indicate whether they are external or internal, according to Freeman (1984).

Materials and Methods

4. Mention that the authors do interviews and then appears respondents. Have a content analysis of the interviews or surveys for the respondents? Be specific.
5. How did authors contact the companies to ensure the number of surveys (interviews)?
6. Is there a complacency effect? (the respondents are the same business personnel), are there external sources that validate the answers?
7. Does not expose Measures. Cannot evaluate what authors consulted either by interview or survey.

Results

8. The results are poor; it does not reflect a content analysis in the case of interviews or an empirical analysis in surveys. It is hard to believe that a nationwide survey (or interview) only shows five variables, making a study unsuitable for a prestigious Journal.

Discussion

9. The discussion shows much information not covered in the whole study. So there are doubts about its origin because it is not the result of its study. Where do the comments and exposed literature appear? Virtually everything appears out of nowhere.
10. The conclusions are flawed and do not contain information resulting from the study and the literature review.

Author Response

Dear reviewer
Thank you for your efforts to improve the quality of our manuscripts. Here is our response to your comments:

1. Reviewer: Abstract: must sell the idea of the manuscript; the content is very simple and does not indicate results.

Author:  We already change it (line 4-17)

2. Reviewer: Keywords: It is necessary to review them does not reflect the most important of the study.

Author: We already change it (line 18)

3. Reviewer: In general terms, should review the introduction, the exposed literature of Open Innovation, Engagement Theory and Craft SMEs is poor. It shows few references and much-unsupported text that for a prestigious journal is incompatible. It is necessary to review the references used because their content becomes questionable by not having an adequate balance between texts by recognized experts and new researchers and stronger arguments related to the topic that is expected to be found.

Author: We've also added a lot of new references in the introduction (line 58-61, 71-72, and 84-103)

4. Reviewer: Line 24. It is correct? "Due to a large number of SMEs in Indonesia, namely 64,194 million units in 2018". 64,194,000,000? I think there is a grammatical error!

Author: We already change it into 64,194 thousand (line 26)

5. Reviewer: The model presented does not have theoretical support, especially about items 2 to 10. These have not been exposed in the literature. If consider stakeholders' issue, must indicate whether they are external or internal, according to Freeman (1984).

Author: Thank you very much, we already change it in line 232-245.

6. Reviewer: Mention that the authors do interviews and then appears respondents. Have a content analysis of the interviews or surveys for the respondents? Be specific

Author: Sorry, we did not conduct a content analysis on this study

7. Reviewer: How did authors contact the companies to ensure the number of surveys (interviews)?

Author: We contacted them based on recommendations from the local government about the best batik SMEs in each province, especially the batik association management in that province. We selected 3 SMEs from each of the main batik producing provinces and 2 SMEs from the remaining provinces (line 308-314).

8. Reviewer: Is there a complacency effect? (the respondents are the same business personnel), are there external sources that validate the answers?

Author: We try to verify the answers of local government officers and batik SMEs through a Focus Group Discussion with national batik experts and the Indonesian Ministry of Industry in line 321-324 and the results in line 434-439.

9. Reviewer: Does not expose Measures. Cannot evaluate what authors consulted either by interview or survey.

Author:  We provide it in line 332-339

10. Reviewer: The results are poor; it does not reflect a content analysis in the case of interviews or an empirical analysis in surveys. It is hard to believe that a nationwide survey (or interview) only shows five variables, making a study unsuitable for a prestigious Journal.

Author: since this study was intended for an in-depth exploration of challenges and open innovation at batik SMEs in Indonesia so we present are only a few variables. But we sure that this study has demonstrated the condition of the batik industry in Indonesia

11. Reviewer: The discussion shows much information not covered in the whole study. So there are doubts about its origin because it is not the result of its study. Where do the comments and exposed literature appear? Virtually everything appears out of nowhere.

Author: We try to add some comments and references in Section 5.1 and 5.2 (yellow block) to reinforce our research results

12. Reviewer: The conclusions are flawed and do not contain information resulting from the study and the literature review.

Author: We've improved our conclusions, especially line 885-891

Hopefully this is in accordance with your

Thank you

Best regards

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Significant improvement

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you for your effort to improve our paper

Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors revised the paper wrt. my previous comments. Most issues are acceptable. However, it is not clear to me about the research design and method used in this research. The authors said they used qualitative, but the questionaire was used. The final version should clearly explain these parts to be clearer. Another minor problem is about the way of writing; proof-read is needed before it gets published.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We have fixed our research design in section 3. We hope this fits your request.
Thank you for your efforts to improve the quality of our manuscript.

Best regards

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is attractive to academia. The authors have made some adjustments that allow a better appreciation of the manuscript. Only a few minor revisions are necessary: 

1. Line 26. It is correct? ". They are 64,194 or 64,194,000; please indicate the correct number. Do not add words after the numbers; state the numbers. 
2. Does not expose Measures. That is, the authors must indicate the questions used in the interview. The author can do it with a table or as supplementary material. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you for your efforts to improve the quality of our manuscript. Here is our response to your second comment:

1. Reviewer: Line 26. It is correct? ". They are 64,194 or 64,194,000; please indicate the correct number. Do not add words after the numbers; state the numbers. 

Author: We already change it into 64,194,000 (line 26)

2. Reviewer: Does not expose Measures. That is, the authors must indicate the questions used in the interview. The author can do it with a table or as supplementary material. 

Author:  We add it in the table 1 (line 300-301) and table 2 (316-317)

Thank you

Best regards