The Construction Industry as the Subject of Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (the Case of Poland)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This research aims to explore the CSR of construction industry in Poland which is a new topic. Although the CSR program and evaluation is a well-established research issue, the authors provide the specialty and importance of construction industry on CSR to highlight the research gap of this topic. The survey from 177 enterprises really provides useful and comprehensive findings to answer this research issue and validate the six research hypotheses. To make the research findings more consistent and structural, I will suggest some parts can be discussed and added after the survey results and research findings, for example, in a new discussion session.
Firstly, the authors highlight the research gap from the recent CSR research in construction is still fragmented and un-conceptualized. It is also the main research objectives to be addressed in this paper. It may be better to summarized and explain how the conceptualization about the CSR project in construction was proposed and organized from this survey findings. Some figure or table can be provided to identify the new conceptualized findings and contribution in this research.
Secondly, this research proposed six research hypotheses. However, the way to write the findings from survey is more like the descriptive statistics and discussion. I will suggest the short section to describe the validating results of these six research hypotheses from the survey data can be further summarized to make the findings more clear and easy to understand.
Finally, this research provides the structure to explain the drivers, motivations, and barriers of CSR in construction in Table 1 by two literatures [36] and [37]. However, the way to categorize and explain the survey data is the scope of implementation, motivation, barriers and benefits. From the perspective of readers, this is a little not consistent to understand the analytical structure of CSR in construction. One possible suggestion for the revision can be discussion on the scope of implementation on CSR, and benefit firstly, to clarify the concept of all CSR project in construction sector. Then, the structure of Table 1, including the drivers, motivations, and barriers of CSR can be further discussed and analyzed by descriptive statistics to provide the whole picture of CSR project and answer the six proposed hypotheses.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The main drawbacks of the paper are the following:
The Abstract section needs to be improved. For example, the aim has to be clearly mentioned (“The aim of the article is to present the scope, motives, barriers and effects of implementing CSR principles by enterprises of the construction sector.”), because “The aim of the article is to present the scope, motives, barriers, and effects of implementing CSR” are elements that contribute to the achievement of the aim.
The ideas of the research could have been more effective through the use of elaborative and concise sentences. The abstract as is does not provide a concise account of the work and conclusion of the research study. It needs to be more structured and synthesized for research clarity.
The keywords contain twice - corporate social responsibility and CSR. Moreover, the keywords do not need numbers (i.e. 1; 2; 3…………)
The Introduction section should be split into two sections. The first section introduces the paper to create familiarity with the research domain, presenting the present objective and research question. In the second section, the Literature review or Background should follow the introduction and be used to justify the objective of the paper.
The literature is very rich related to the subject of the paper. Unfortunately, the authors used only 53 sources and only 23 sources are from the last five years (2016-2021). This weakness negatively impacts methodology, findings, discussions, and conclusions.
The six hypotheses do not logically from the literature. I suggest reformulating the hypotheses. For example, hypothesis 2 “Large enterprises undertake purposeful, formalised actions, and their activity in the field in question may influence the organisational structure of the entity.” I suggest - Large enterprises in the field in question influence the organisational structure of the entity.
See the following sources:
Chang, A.S.; Canelas, C.; Chen, Y.-L. Relationships between Environmental Initiatives and Impact Reductions for Construction Companies. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8061. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13148061
Burlea-Schiopoiu, A.; Mihai, L.S. An Integrated Framework on the Sustainability of SMEs. Sustainability 2019, 11, 6026. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216026
Zahidy, A.A.; Sorooshian, S.; Abd Hamid, Z. Critical Success Factors for Corporate Social Responsibility Adoption in the Construction Industry in Malaysia. Sustainability 2019, 11, 6411. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226411
The Table 2. Characteristics of the research sample according to the number of employed persons - is not necessary, because the information is presented above – p. 5, r. 218-221 – “The surveyed sample was dominated by small-sized enterprises with between 10 and 49 employees and they accounted for 59.89%. The share of medium-sized enterprises was represented by 27.68% of entities. The remaining group accounting for 12.43% of the research sample belonged to the category of large enterprises (tab. 2).” The number of observations can be mentioned between brackets. For example, they accounted for 59.89% (106 observations).
Moreover, the Table 3. Comparison of the structure of the general population and the research sample contains information from Table 2. Characteristics of the research sample according to the number of employed persons.
I suggest paying attention to the multiple presentations of the same information.
The sentences from the page 6, r.: 228-229 “The share of small companies in the general population is higher by 28.66 percentage points than the share of entities of this size in the research sample” contains data that has not statistical support “28.66”?
You have to move the objective of the study from the Materials and Methods section to Introduction – “The objectives of the study are to identify the role that CSR principles play in the activities of Polish construction sector enterprises. An attempt is made: to determine the degree of implementation of CSR postulates, identify the motives that construction enterprises follow when deciding to implement CSR principles, identify barriers and determine the effects of implementation of CSR principles by construction enterprise”.
The results are not reported in an understandable way.
There are no alternative explanations for the results and these are not adequately controlled for in the analyses.
The results were not well-presented to readers to understand the focus of the research study. The results must be interpretive rather than just descriptive and connect the research results with relevant literature citations for validity and reliability.
It is important to correlate the results with the effects on improving existing knowledge in the research field.
I suggest providing more depth to your conclusion to improve its efficacy and relation to the rest of the paper. It is important to include the key focus of the study in the conclusion. Moreover, the conclusion is not supported by the research data, which does not indicate a clearer path for future studies on the topic. A follow-up of restating findings with supporting literature reviews could make the conclusion section more effective.
The Conclusions section contains many sentences that fit with the results section. For example, p. 14, r.: 501-520 “As a result of the conducted research, the hypotheses posed at the outset were positively verified and referred to: (1) key parameters differentiating the degree of CSR implementation in enterprises in the construction sector in Poland, which include – enterprise size, turnover, time of market presence and origin of capital, (2) purposefulness and degree of formalisation of activities in the scope of CSR implementation - in large enterprises these attributes are characteristic, while small and medium enterprises implement postulates and principles of Corporate Social Responsibility to a large extent in an informal manner, (3) scope of key benefits that enterprises indicate in connection with the implementation of CSR - for large enterprises, image benefits are very important, while financial benefits may be delayed in time, postponement of possible financial benefits is also admitted by small and medium enterprises, (4) barriers and difficulties in implementing CSR which in small and medium enterprises refer to limitations in the area of knowledge in the subject matter, as often owners and managers of small construction enterprises perceive CSR activities exclusively as costs that will not bring any additional benefits. These are indications that show a high degree of convergence with the results of other studies conducted worldwide in relation to construction enterprises. The problems and barriers to implementing CSR are universal and depend more on the scale and level of internationalisation (in our study determined by the source of capital) than on the place of conducting business.”
Good luck!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper aims to identify the role that CSR principles play in the activities of Polish construction companies. An attempt is made to determine the degree of implementation of CSR postulates, identify the motives that construction companies follow when they decide to implement CSR principles, and determine the effects of the implementation of CSR principles by construction companies. To do so, they analyzed factors such as place of origin, type of capital (domestic, foreign), annual turnover, and time in the market.
The paper is very interesting and the topic is relevant. However, the authors should have supported their work with a theory that would help them support their hypotheses and the results achieved. Perhaps the authors could adopt the Legitimacy theory to explain the interaction between organizations and their environments (external factors).
In section 2 - Materials and Methods, the authors present the objectives and identify the hypotheses. However, some support for the hypotheses appears in the results and should be in this section.
The authors mention that the sample adopted for the study was selected using the purposive method. They should have further explained the method and the advantage of using it. They also should have addressed the representativeness of the sample relative to the industry, because 8.65% of the total is limited. Since the authors divided the sample by company size, why does the representativeness of each part (%) differ from the total of each (table 3)?
The authors report that the previous literature review indicates that to date no research has been conducted on the motives of Polish companies in the construction sector in implementing the concept of CSR. However, the significance of this study should be more convincing. The authors should better justify the relevance of the study, what it brings new to the literature.
In section 2 - Materials and Methods, the authors already perform a descriptive analysis, which should be included in the results.
The authors mention in section 4 - Discussion, that the conclusions of the paper do not differ significantly from those appearing in publications on CSR in the construction sector in other countries. In this sense, the authors need to better explain the contribution of this paper.
In the conclusions of the study, they should have stated the limitations of the work and defined future research tracks.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Good luck!
