Relational and Networking Character: Threat or Savior for the Sustainability of European Erasmus+ Projects in the Times of COVID-19 Pandemic?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article should improve in the following aspects to be published.

1. Review of academic literature. The state of art of a research problem cannot be reduced to a list of bibliographic references. The author should extract and explain the main contributions of the literature to the subject studied and to identify a gap in the research. This is necessary to show the contributions of the article to the advancement of knowledge in the discussion of results. Specifically, he should explain the content of table 1 and lines 77-79. He should also carry out a state of the art on “Management Sustainability”, which is presented as a core concept of the research; however, the text does not explain the meaning of the concept. There is also an absence of state of the question on the Erasmus+ projects.
2. Correct serious deficiencies in the methodology. There are no hypotheses or research questions. An exploratory investigation should indicate the hypotheses to be validated. Also, the author does not distinguish between universe and sample: what is the number of Erasmus+ project and is national distribution? how many people received the questionnaire? what percentage responded, and from? Also, the date and the technical mode of application of the questionnaire is not indicated either.
3. Insufficient analysis. The author has not considered the presence of other variables (for example, the sending and receiving countries of the Erasmus + project) that could explain the differences in the maintenance or suspension of the projects. He should contrast the validation of the indicators that he considers key, with the statistically significant presence or not of others indicators or variables. The author could provide the set of data.
4. Discussion of results. The results are based on a minimal statistical difference between two unique variables. Absence of validated hypotheses. Finally, contributions to the literature or differences with other studies are not exposed.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

      Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions. Here is the list of modifications I introduced according to your remarks:

• Bibliometric references and their contributions have been described – now new text is in lines 72-109
• Research gap is now described in lines of 19-23
• Former lines 77-79 have been explained further – now it is: 121-126
• The use of the term: ‘management sustainability’ is unfortunate and it has been replaced simply by the notion of ‘sustainability’ itself in the sense of sustaining business activities and not as ‘sustainability’ in its broad sense.
• The character of Erasmus+ projects has been described further in new lines of 139-143.
• Working hypothesis and research questions have been introduced now - lines: 151-160, 292-295, 348-352, 407-411, 422-425
• Universe and sample issue and technical issues of questionnaire application are now described in lines: 170-185
• The issues of countries distribution and other factors or indicators have not been included because of two reasons: (1) already researched Erasmus+ projects (990) form extremely diverse networks and mixes of various European countries, consequently, geographic variable would deserve a completely different kind of research concentrating only on this issue, the aim of the research here is to see organizational sustainability in the context of the pandemic which affected all the countries in Europe equally; introducing geographical variable would also mean that there are also some cultural differences in approaching sustainability of projects – this could be an interesting study but it would require totally different underlying assumptions (2) the aim of the research is to see Erasmus+ projects’ sustainability in the context of relational and networking paradigms in management, consequently two main factors underlying these paradigms have been used: digital and social aspect as well as organizational learning potential. Other factors are not key ones in this respect, however, the author of this article has just published the book referring to other contextual factors as well. I concluded that the form of article allows to present the research in its main aspects whereas the book provides the space for extended analysis.
• Putting this research in the context of other researches in the field is now in lines: 432-440

I hope these modifications will be met with your acceptance. Thank you very much again.

Reviewer 2 Report

This article is potentially interesting for Sustainability readers. Please provide Discussion and Conclusions parts. This should be clarify the importance and worth of the study results.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

      Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. Taking into consideration the remarks from all the reviewers I present you the list of modifications I introduced according to all the remarks. Here is the list:

• Bibliometric references and their contributions have been described – now new text is in lines 72-109
• Research gap is now described in lines of 19-23
• Former lines 77-79 have been explained further – now it is: 121-126
• The use of the term: ‘management sustainability’ is unfortunate and it has been replaced simply by the notion of ‘sustainability’ itself in the sense of sustaining business activities and not as ‘sustainability’ in its broad sense.
• The character of Erasmus+ projects has been described further in new lines of 139-143.
• Working hypothesis and research questions have been introduced now - lines: 151-160, 292-295, 348-352, 407-411, 422-425
• Universe and sample issue and technical issues of questionnaire application are now described in lines: 170-185
• Putting this research in the context of other researches in the field is now in lines: 432-440

 

According to your suggestion, discussion and conclusion parts have been extended as a consequence of the above modifications.

I hope these modifications will be met with your acceptance. Thank you very much again.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is coherent, written in a logical way, easy to follow.

Some suggestions, however, would be:
1. A minor problem would be the a certain difficulty in quickly identifying the references in the text - the formality of putting only numbers - especially in the case of Table 1 where the references that address the mentioned topics are presented.

2. The explanation of some notations is missing (see Table 5, for N, M and Me). Even if the N notation is well known for the sample.

3. Although in the text the questionnaire is presented in processed form, by grouping the questions according to the criteria followed, it might be good to put in an annex the questionnaire in its original form.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

      Thank you very much for your suggestions and your high assessment of my article. Accordingly, I explained further references from Table 1. Bibliometric references and their contributions from this table have been described – now new text is in lines 72-109. Also notations ‘M’ and ‘Me’ are now corrected as ‘mean’ and ‘median’. As regards, introducing the questionnaire, if the editor allows I can do it, but please, note that this questionnaire is 26 pages long exceeding greatly the length of the article itself since it also included questions used for the separate analysis published elsewhere. Consequently, I thought that I would be plausible to introduce in the article text only relevant excerpts from it.

Here is the list of modifications introduced as a result of other reviews:

• Research gap is now described in lines of 19-23
• Former lines 77-79 have been explained further – now it is: 121-126
• The use of the term: ‘management sustainability’ is unfortunate and it has been replaced simply by the notion of ‘sustainability’ itself in the sense of sustaining business activities and not as ‘sustainability’ in its broad sense.
• The character of Erasmus+ projects has been described further in new lines of 139-143.
• Working hypothesis and research questions have been introduced now - lines: 151-160, 292-295, 348-352, 407-411, 422-425
• Universe and sample issue and technical issues of questionnaire application are now described in lines: 170-185
• Putting this research in the context of other researches in the field is now in lines: 432-440

I hope these modifications will be met with your final acceptance. Thank you very much again.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

The modifications made are in accordance with the recommendations. The explanations given for not making other modifications are consistent. The article can be published.

However, it would be convenient:

1. Include the gap in the main text, not only in the abstract
2. Include the explanation given in the author's response to justify in methodology the no consideration of territorial variables in the research.

Best regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your final acceptance. I really appreciate it. I will amend the article according to your two final suggestions.

 

‘Include the gap in the main text, not only in the abstract’:

the reference to research gap is now also made in the main text in lines: 116-120.

‘Include the explanation given in the author's response to justify in methodology the no consideration of territorial variables in the research’

– this explanation is now provided in lines 460-478, which also resulted in introducing one more reference [49] in lines 583-584.

Kind regards.