Digital Innovation for the Sustainability of Reshoring Strategies: A Literature Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is very well written and clear, giving an original review of research contributions on reshoring sustainability.
Minor comments relating to typos:
- on page 8, line 270: "i" to be deleted
- on page 10, line 360: the word "when" is written twice
- on page 11-12: final parts from supplementary materials to Appendix B should be completed or deleted
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
thank you so much for your suggestions. We have revised the whole manuscript and amended the typos you detected.
Best regards
Reviewer 2 Report
The motivation and the identification of the research gap are adequately presented. However, the authors do not really do what they aim to do. The RQ1 is not answered at all. RQ 2 is only briefly touched upon under the question "why reshoring." So in the end the literature review ended up being another review of reshoring practices with no added value with respect to sustainability.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
thank you for your useful comments. We have followed them and in doing so we have better addressed the two RQs and we have better exploited the achieved results in terms of reshoring sustainability. In this sense, we'd like also to underline that we analyzed a sample of paper dealing with reshoring implication in terms of sustainability, and emphasizing the relationship between reshoring and sustainability when we have detailed each of the 5W and the remaining H. In fact, we analyzed the main motivations (coming from the SLR) at the core of Who, What, When, Where, Why and How reshoring, finding out (as reported into the manuscript) that among these motivations there are several related to reshoring implications for sustainability. In doing so, we have also pointed out how innovative digital technologies (much more available in the reshoring destinations) can support the transition of operations not only towards process efficiency and output effectiveness, but also towards sustainability, e.g. especially through the implementation of advanced green digital technologies.
Best Regards
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The revisions are too vague and no substantial details are provided. Please explain in detail the following findings of your literature review.
Also what is sustainable reshoring? I do not see any definition adopted by the authors. or if there is some definition or understanding of sustainable reshoring emerging from the literature review is also not clear. In the revisions it seems, authors are saying not much is there on this topic. So I wonder whether then it is still make any sense to write a review on a topic on which there is not much to review about.
1) the role and the influence of sustainable innovation on reshoring, 2) the contribution of reshoring to sustainable
development, and 3) the role of digital innovation on reshoring sustainability.
What are the role and influence of sustainable innovation on reshoring? What kind of sustainable innovation are employed? In which geographies? In which sectors? Which papers specifically discusses these issues?
On the contribution of reshoring to sustainable
development, - which SDGs are covered? how? in which geographies? In which sectors? which articles addresses these issues?
on the role of digital innovation on reshoring sustainability - which technologies are employed? how does it contribute to sustainability? In which geographies and sectors? which articles addresses these issues specifically.
regards
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you for your valuable comments. Follows the amendments and changes done according to your suggestions.
Dealing with "sustainable reshoring", in the Introduction we have better highlighted that unfortunately scholars have provided no punctual definitions of it, but they just pointed out the relationship existing between the two concepts. Few of them reflected on the importance of making reshoring strategies sustainable, so we have also better clarified this issue and how authors approached it. In findings presentation and discussions, we have also better highlighted the drivers and in particular the influence of digital innovative technologies on reshoring strategies sustainability. Therefore, the review aim was trying to understand the main motivation of reshoring decisions and the influence that digital technologies can have on the related strategies and their sustainability, in order to contribute to a nascent debate among scholars and practitioners.
Dealing with innovation, we have better clarified that the focus of the analysis was on digital innovations more than non sustainable and green innovations and their influence on reshoring. However, we have also better pointed out the ability of digital innovative technologies in making manufacturing more sustainable, especially when its processes are reshored.
The contribution of reshoring to sustainable development (also underlining the related SDgs) has been argued both in the Introduction and in the Discussion. The same has been done for digital innovation, stressing this concept from the title.
To address the questions related to the contribution of reshoring to sustainable
development and to the role of digital innovation on reshoring sustainability, apart from adding further explanations and evidences, we have tried to summarized what asked in a table (placed at the end of Discussions), in which we have provided the required informations retrieving them from the results of the SLR (e.g., which technologies are employed? how does it contribute to sustainability? In which geographies and sectors? which articles addresses these issues specifically, which SDGs are covered?).
Moreover, some typos have been amended.
Best Regards
The Authors
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Fine, go ahead and publish.
