Achieving Organisational Alignment, Safety and Sustainable Performance in Organisations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

No special comment except minor spell checks.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1, thank you for reviewing our article. We are glad you have no special comments in that regard. We have altered some parts of the article following the comments made by the other reviewers. We are convinced this also improved the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well-formulated and written. A few minor recommendations:

Figure 2 can be enlarged (specifically the text)

Line 94 (figure 1) Capitalize the word Figure

Line 117, 140 - Jones et Al. [6] Möller et Al [9] stating should be (et al.) Not sure if this is a journal requirement but I doubt as I have also written for Sustainability.

Some inconsistency with using & and ‘and’ i.e. Goodman and Loh (Line 527); safety & excellent (Line 79) Blokland & Reniers (line 37). Generally, in text (not in rackets) the word will be written out – and. Check and fix throughout.

Some major recommendations:

Add a methodology section, even is only brief as even conceptual papers follows some form of methodology.

Line 57-79 includes a lot of objectives. Perhaps encapsulate this into one main aim or research question.

After such an in-depth discussion of all the factors and aspects the conclusion is kind of a disappointment. This can be improved. Highlight the contribution, limitations and future studies or work.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 2

Thank you for reviewing our article and the provision of constructive and helpful feedback. We have implemented all of your minor recommendations and made an effort to follow-up on your major recommendations.

We understand the disappointment regarding the conclusion and we constructed a more developed part on Total Respect Management, added some considerations and adapted our conclusion. We are convinced that these alterations have improved the message contained in this article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has a well-prepared literature review, but there is no analysis of the authors' contributions. Their contribution is unnoticeable. It is a purely theoretical analysis without suggesting how and where to use it. The lack of reference is an analysis in a given industry or a study of a specific case illustrates the inability to use the analysis, there is also no specific model with a description of how to use it. The work does not have any hypotheses or the purpose of the work, it does not allow to determine whether the research problem has been solved.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3

Thank you for reviewing our article. Your feedback is valuable to us, as it seems that it is not clear and obvious what our contribution to the article and safety science is.

This article is a third paper in a row and they are all part of a PhD research. For this research, it was the purpose to test a design (initially written in the book Safety & Performance as a part of this research) in an operational environment. But, unfortunately, no organisation was bold enough to take up the challenge so far. Due to this fact, the choice fell an a theoretical approach to the question on how to achieve safety and performance in organisations proactively, underpinning the design with findings out of the scientific literature and presenting the design in the form of a series of concept papers, for which this is the third in a row, all published in sustainability.

So, this article is a concept paper and not a research paper, this might be an explanation for the perception of a missing contribution, as the contribution is to be found in the whole concept of dynamic alignment, using ISO 31000 as a tool, which, in our humble opinion, is not a common or regular use of this standard.

So the extensive literature review is to underpin the validity of the concept and to connect it with the two other papers. We are fully aware of the fact that this design still needs the test of a practical application and will therefore add a paragraph on some concerns and proposed future studies in this regard.

We hope that this explanation, the addition of a supplementary paragraph and the improvements made, following the suggestions of reviewer 2, will be adequate and resolve your concerns.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

It still requires corrections, but can be published in this form.