Sustainability Is All about Values: The Challenges of Considering Moral and Benefit Values in Business Model Decisions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper starts with the premise that sustainable development has focused on nature rather than people. This seems like an odd statement to make, particularly considering the sustainable development goals (SDGs). If anything, there is plenty of literature, reports and evidence that economic considerations have continued to trump environmental ones ever since the term was coined.

Be it as it were, the literature is quite far from that which a paper of this nature should be examining. For instance, given that the paper states that it “attempts to deliniete and differentiate rationalities”, the literature on said rationality is inadequately described. The assumption that values for sustainability are not compatible with instrumental rationality is not substantiated. It can reasonably be argued that several of the values are indeed compatible with this type of rationality.

The 4 values namely (1) economic value as a means and not as an end, (2) quality of life, (3) altruism and sense of community, and (4) respect for the natural environment are not elaborated in the literature, even though they are the ones used in the method.

The paper argues that it does not discuss specific “decisions criteria” (sic), as it attempts to “brings a more abstract level, which are the rationalities used for decision-making”. However while asking this question, it at the same time has preconceptions on the types of rationality which should apply. Moreover, it ultimately does indeed seem to assess decision criteria.

It is not clear why the research needed an organization that is “open to changing”. Was changing an organization part of the research question, or was it to assess the types of rationality adopted? 

The action research method is described in general but not as applied to this work.

The context is only mentioned in passing, in the results.  

Finally, the paper also strikes me as not being in an adequate state of readiness for publication, starting with a typo in the abstract, and proceeding with several highlights in the manuscript.

It is quite possible that the authors have all the material necessary to make this a good paper for publication. However it is not what is apparent in the current draft. As written, it is rather confusing.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

We do appreciate the time and effort you put in revising our manuscript. We hope our modifications are sufficient and are open for further discussions. Bellow you can find our modifications regarding each comment you presented.

The paper starts with the premise that sustainable development has focused on nature rather than people. This seems like an odd statement to make, particularly considering the sustainable development goals (SDGs). If anything, there is plenty of literature, reports and evidence that economic considerations have continued to trump environmental ones ever since the term was coined.

We appreciate you comment. Our view on sustainable development is that is does go beyond the environmental issues. The term itself has origins on an environmental concern, but it has been evolving. We reorganized the first paragraph to remove the beginning of the paragraph to bring more emphasis on a broader perspective of the sustainable development concept.

Be it as it were, the literature is quite far from that which a paper of this nature should be examining. For instance, given that the paper states that it “attempts to deliniete and differentiate rationalities”, the literature on said rationality is inadequately described. The assumption that values for sustainability are not compatible with instrumental rationality is not substantiated. It can reasonably be argued that several of the values are indeed compatible with this type of rationality.

Regarding this comment, we tried to make our explanation clearer and hope these modifications in the beginning of Section e (Introduction) are enough. In particular, we included this text:

“The importance of decisions is also recognized in the international discussion promoted by the United Nations (UN). The UN Agenda 2030 proposed the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and associated 169 targets to guide the decisions we take over the next years [6]. In this context, the type of rationality adopted to make decisions can affect people´s actions, which can provide results in direction of or contrary to global sustainable development and, therefore, to the SDGs. [7]. Instrumental rationality is related to social actions based on means-ends rational calculation [8,9]. This kind of rationality that dominates the current economic system [10] is the basis for the implementation of win-win business opportunities, providing both financial gains and social-environmental positive impacts. However, this is not always the case and win-lose situations are also faced by decisors, showing that the instrumental rationality´s limitation as it does not seem capable of providing sustainable development on its own. In particular, instrumental rationality shows limitations in the marketplace [11,12] especially when the main goal is financial gain maximization [13,14]. There are proposals to consider the natural environment within instrumental rationality [15], but in general adding other types of rationalities in the decision-making processes can provide more sustainable development [7]. Substantive rationality [8,9], based on ethical standards not related directly to the results, can provide moral value-oriented rational action and decisions for sustainable development. In the lasts years, some authors are calling this rationality connected to sustainability also as “aesthetic rationality” [16,17] or “axiological rationality [3]. This kind of rationality proposes a shift from rationality centered in individual interests (prevalent in the current economic system) to rationality centered in collective interests (prevalent in a development based on human wellbeing) [3]. To make effective this shift, people need to make decisions that orientate their actions guided by moral values for a more sustainable development. Moral values can be personal emotional dispositions or moral concepts, reasoning, properties, or rules, linked to concern for others [18]. Contributions at the end of the last millennium already pointed out the importance to recognize that environmental problems are an ethical, as much as an institutional issue [19]. For example, the “full value” of an environmental resource is recognized not only in economical terms, but is largely based on subjective moral values and qualitative assertion [20]. Coming to more recent studies and broadening the view from environmental to a wider understanding of sustainable development, sustainability is recognized as a moral value related especially to intergenerational justice [21]. Other rationalities, besides the substantive one, have also been pointed out as valuable to complement the instrumental rationality to enable sustainable development”

 

The 4 values namely (1) economic value as a means and not as an end, (2) quality of life, (3) altruism and sense of community, and (4) respect for the natural environment are not elaborated in the literature, even though they are the ones used in the method.

There are publications in the literature discussing some of the values associated with sustainability, but none of them systematize these values as was done in the publication that proposes the 4 macro values, and that we use as a basis in our research. We improved this part.

 

The paper argues that it does not discuss specific “decisions criteria” (sic), as it attempts to “brings a more abstract level, which are the rationalities used for decision-making”. However while asking this question, it at the same time has preconceptions on the types of rationality which should apply. Moreover, it ultimately does indeed seem to assess decision criteria.

As we tried to explain, our research does not analyze the decision criteria. This would substantially increase the complexity of conducting the research. For instance, for the main decision of phase A (What ideas for sustainable development could be explored?), if we would investigate the decision criteria, we would have to list all aspects that influence the specific decision, such as: type of problem to be solved (social or environmental), potential net positive impact, how lives can be improved by the start up (or other social impacts), market size and other indicators to support the associated decision. Our research, however, addresses the rationality used to make decisions, which influence the decision process in a more general (abstract) level than the decision criteria. We hope this explanation can make our argument clearer.

It is not clear why the research needed an organization that is “open to changing”. Was changing an organization part of the research question, or was it to assess the types of rationality adopted? 

“changing an organization” was not directly part of our research question. We rewrote this sentence to improve this part.

The action research method is described in general but not as applied to this work.

We introduced the following paragraph to improve Section 2 (Materials and Methods), considering your suggestion:

“In parallel with the practical development of the startup, for eleven months, it was established a continuous process of reflection and learning, as advised by Coughlan and Coghlan [63]. Periodic meetings were held, in particular when each strategic decision was to be taken. The first meeting was developed to discuss the context and the purpose of the research. The following meetings was structured to bring information from the practical development of the startup. These discussions were important to open space for reflections, serving as input for each action research cycle.”

The context is only mentioned in passing, in the results.  

We understand the importance of providing information on the context, especially in the case of qualitative researches. Thus, we added this information to the first paragraph of Section 3 (Results), transcribed bellow:

“The action research was developed in eleven months in the context of an emerging economy, where social vulnerabilities are more present than in developed countries. The research was conducted in Brazil, in the city of São Paulo. More specifically, the startup development was influenced by settings related to a large public University, given the formal connection of the researcher leader of the startup, as researcher in the Production Engineering Department.”

Finally, the paper also strikes me as not being in an adequate state of readiness for publication, starting with a typo in the abstract, and proceeding with several highlights in the manuscript.

We used an opportunity provided by our University for English proofing using AKE website. We are also sending the certificate. At the moment, we do not have access to submit the manuscript for another round of English edition. We hope you can understand our position. We want to improve English edition at the end of the review phase.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I agree with changes made by the authors, according to comments and suggestions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

 

We do appreciate the time and effort you put in revising our manuscript.

 

Best regards,

 

The authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read this interesting paper about moral and benefit values in business model decisions related to sustainability in Brazil. I was happy to read the paper: it is fluent, well written and offers very interesting insights.
I list below some indications to further improve it.

• Introduction: 1) rename it "Introduction and Background"; 2) in the first line you talk about "the theme of sustainable development has been developed in the literature". Please clarify which field of research and literature are you talking about. Sustainability field in general? Sustainability in social sciences? Sustainability in economic field? You should also insert here some important references related to the field of the research you wish to enter into.; 3) p.2 line 59-60 The UN Agenda is 2030, not 2020 and it guides our decisions over the next ten years.; 4) line 65 Due to the importance given by the paper to ethical values, I think it is appropriate at this point to offer more explanations and details on this interesting and important concept (moral values that guide action and decisions for sustainable development); 5) line 80 "the aim of generating strategic competitive advantage": it's not the only goal related to the care of stakeholder interests, please add the other possible aims; 6) line 95 "Analyzing recent literature", which one? Please clarify.; 7) p. 3 line 105 "investigating decisions made through instrumental rationality", please insert some references about this point; 8) from line 109 to line 120 is all about workers but it is not clear if it is only an example (in this case the text devoted to the example is too long) or if the case of workers is crucial for the paper (I think so because you discuss this point in the discussion) and in this case you should explain better this concept and not to say "For instance, there are still research..."; 9) Please erase the final lines of introduction (from 137 to 141).
• Results: 1) at the end of the table (line 233-234) you use number 1-2-3-4 but in the Table you use letter A-B-C-D.
• Discussion: 1) p. 8 line 427-432 I think that here you have the most interesting point of your results: the nature of normative goal of sustainability and values related to sustainable development like external and not natural occurring in people's personal moral values. These are very topical and actual issues, very important for practitioners and also for scholars. I suggest you to give a wider space for discussing this point and to highlight it also in the abstract and conclusion; 2) Figure 1 line 441 p.9 You have used the concept of Communicative Rationality and Bounded Rationality but you have not used and explained them. I suggest you to not include in figures or tables any information or concept that you have not prior used or explained.

I hope that my suggestions can help you improve the paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

We do appreciate the time and effort you put in revising our manuscript. We hope our modifications are sufficient and are open for further discussions. Bellow you can find our modifications regarding each comment you presented.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to read this interesting paper about moral and benefit values in business model decisions related to sustainability in Brazil. I was happy to read the paper: it is fluent, well written and offers very interesting insights.
I list below some indications to further improve it.

• Introduction: 1) rename it "Introduction and Background";

Modification implemented.

 

• 2) in the first line you talk about "the theme of sustainable development has been developed in the literature". Please clarify which field of research and literature are you talking about. Sustainability field in general? Sustainability in social sciences? Sustainability in economic field? You should also insert here some important references related to the field of the research you wish to enter into.;

We improved the beginning of our manuscript to address your and other reviewer comments.

 

• 3) p.2 line 59-60 The UN Agenda is 2030, not 2020 and it guides our decisions over the next ten years.;

Thank you for pointing this out. We modified to correct the sentence.

 

• 4) line 65 Due to the importance given by the paper to ethical values, I think it is appropriate at this point to offer more explanations and details on this interesting and important concept (moral values that guide action and decisions for sustainable development);

We improved this paragraph to reinforce and improve this argument. Here is the modified text:

“Substantive rationality [8,9], based on ethical standards not related directly to the results, can provide moral value-oriented rational action and decisions for sustainable development. In the lasts years, some authors are calling this rationality connected to sustainability also as “aesthetic rationality” [16,17] or “axiological rationality [3]. This kind of rationality proposes a shift from rationality centered in individual interests (prevalent in the current economic system) to rationality centered in collective interests (prevalent in a development based on human wellbeing) [3]. To make effective this shift, people need to make decisions that orientate their actions guided by moral values for a more sustainable development. Moral values can be personal emotional dispositions or moral concepts, reasoning, properties, or rules, linked to concern for others [18]. Contributions at the end of the last millennium already pointed out the importance to recognize that environmental problems are an ethical, as much as an institutional issue [19]. For example, the “full value” of an environmental resource is recognized not only in economical terms, but is largely based on subjective moral values and qualitative assertion [20]. Coming to more recent studies and broadening the view from environmental to a wider understanding of sustainable development, sustainability is recognized as a moral value related especially to intergenerational justice [21].”

 

• 5) line 80 "the aim of generating strategic competitive advantage": it's not the only goal related to the care of stakeholder interests, please add the other possible aims;

We improved this paragraph to reinforce and improve this argument. Here is the modified text:

“Corporate sustainability includes encouraging organizations to exchange sustainable benefit value exchange with theirs stakeholders [31], e.g., to take care of stakeholders’ interests and needs and, at the same time, consider the stakeholders’ contributions to the business model [32]. Considering stakeholders into business decisions can contribute to strategic competitive advantage, corporate performance and long term business success [33]”

• 6) line 95 "Analyzing recent literature", which one? Please clarify.;

 

We removed this part of the sentence, as the analyzed literature is indicated latter in this sentence.

“main application in organizations are linked to the development of sustainability assessment tools [37,38] based on multi-criteria [39–41], or multi-attributes [42], or multi-objective [43], etc.”

 

• 7) p. 3 line 105 "investigating decisions made through instrumental rationality", please insert some references about this point;

We improved this sentence.

 

• 8) from line 109 to line 120 is all about workers but it is not clear if it is only an example (in this case the text devoted to the example is too long) or if the case of workers is crucial for the paper (I think so because you discuss this point in the discussion) and in this case you should explain better this concept and not to say "For instance, there are still research...";

We understand your argument and modified this part of the Introduction to make our argument clearer. The workers as central to decisions for sustainability is crucial for the paper. We hope our modifications were enough to address your concern.

 

• 9) Please erase the final lines of introduction (from 137 to 141).

As we mentioned the other rationalities previously in this Section, we followed your suggestion.

 

• Results: 1) at the end of the table (line 233-234) you use number 1-2-3-4 but in the Table you use letter A-B-C-D.

We identified the values for sustainable development with numbers (1-2-3-4).

 

• Discussion: 1) p. 8 line 427-432 I think that here you have the most interesting point of your results: the nature of normative goal of sustainability and values related to sustainable development like external and not natural occurring in people's personal moral values. These are very topical and actual issues, very important for practitioners and also for scholars. I suggest you to give a wider space for discussing this point and to highlight it also in the abstract and conclusion;

We recognized this argument is relevant. We chose to insert a specific challenge in the discussion to provide deeper debate about it. It became the third challenge.in Section 4 Discussions.

 

• 2) Figure 1 line 441 p.9 You have used the concept of Communicative Rationality and Bounded Rationality but you have not used and explained them. I suggest you to not include in figures or tables any information or concept that you have not prior used or explained.

We agree with your comment and removed communicative and bounded rationality from Figure 1..

 

I hope that my suggestions can help you improve the paper.

Thank you very much for your suggestions!

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the efforts made, particularly with bringing in the relevant literature and providing information on some of the key missing elements in the paper.

I nonetheless consider that the paper can be considerably improved if the following changes are implemented:

1. A thorough reading to ensure that the syntax and grammar is checked by a native english speaker. For instance the word "decisors" (used repeatedly in the text) is obsolete in English. This is just one example and it makes for very difficult reading.

2. A tightening of the whole paper so that it revolves around the research question without meandering too far away.

3. A more succinct discussion section which also tells us what is novel in the findings or what aspects of the findings confirm those in other papers.

4. A stronger effort to give the reader some comfort that there was rigor in the methodology.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

 

We do appreciate the time and effort you put in revising our manuscript. We hope our modifications are sufficient and are open for further discussions. Bellow you can find our modifications regarding each comment you presented.

 

I appreciate the efforts made, particularly with bringing in the relevant literature and providing information on some of the key missing elements in the paper.

I nonetheless consider that the paper can be considerably improved if the following changes are implemented:

1. A thorough reading to ensure that the syntax and grammar is checked by a native english speaker. For instance the word "decisors" (used repeatedly in the text) is obsolete in English. This is just one example and it makes for very difficult reading.

We sent the article to a professional English proofreading service (AJE company - certificate annexed).

2. A tightening of the whole paper so that it revolves around the research question without meandering too far away.

We agree with your comment. Especially in the introduction section, there is a lot of text before the presenting our research question. However, we had some difficulties in narrowing this section. In our first version, this section consisted of 950 words, but after the review process and suggestions from 5 reviewers, in multiple phases (this is a resubmission), the amount of text increased a lot. We tried to delete some paragraphs that are not essential, but we did not delete the parts introduced in response to other reviewers.

Although we introduced more text in the article to improve the discussion as advised in your comment number 3, we managed to reduce the text in relation to the previous version.

3. A more succinct discussion section which also tells us what is novel in the findings or what aspects of the findings confirm those in other papers.

We merged the first two points of the discussion into one and we explained what is novel in the findings or what aspects of the findings confirm those in other papers

4. A stronger effort to give the reader some comfort that there was rigor in the methodology.  

We introduced more literature, especially linking action research and organizational development.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear colleague,

I must admit, I accepted to review this paper because it is also the type of papers that I wrote in the early years of my career, trying to convince others that companies would be more rational if they were more sustainable. It already shows in the strong and debatable statement in your title. It also shows in your references that you refer extensively to early contributions in our debate. I think the debate is advanced now and we must ask better questions. So, I feel a lot of sympathy with your approach, but my review also reflects partially what I was struggling with: Much more than a motivation and an ambition, we need academic rigour, theories and clear methods. No matter what type of methodology one uses, research must be reproducable.

Besides, you formulate a couple of assumptions that you may want to justify before posing them: p1l12: most companies are still not concerned with social and environmental issues. I m not sure about this at  all.

Your RQ is problematic. I will not give a lecture here, but please be advised that research standards suggest to not use "how can...?" in a research question. The answer will systematically always be: In many ways! But that is not what we would be interested in, is it?

Your method is not clear to me, besides, I have strong doubts that you can successfully deal with the unschärfe that is a likely consequence of being the researcher and the unit of observation. Your methodology is not spelled out.

Your data is very thin, besides, with all due respect, the company in case may not be of major impact wrt sustainability.

 

Discussion: Can you translate any of your findings to corporations indeed? I guess that all structures, including communication and decision making structures are systematically dissimilar from corporations.

Conclusions: I don't see that you answer the RQ.

I don't see any clear result wrt theory spelled out, no attempt for formulating a research plan. I would love to see what we can learn from your work.

Besides that, I may add that, not being an English native speaker myself, I was a bit irritated by the lack of carefulness in the presentation. I don't expect a professionally copy-edited version for the review, but I think, that typos should be filtered out before a submission.

I am sorry, I could not be more positive, but I hope my remarks can help you a bit further.

All the best with advancing your work!  

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we answered to your suggestions below.

 

Dear colleague,

I must admit, I accepted to review this paper because it is also the type of papers that I wrote in the early years of my career, trying to convince others that companies would be more rational if they were more sustainable. It already shows in the strong and debatable statement in your title. It also shows in your references that you refer extensively to early contributions in our debate. I think the debate is advanced now and we must ask better questions. So, I feel a lot of sympathy with your approach, but my review also reflects partially what I was struggling with: Much more than a motivation and an ambition, we need academic rigour, theories and clear methods. No matter what type of methodology one uses, research must be reproducable.

The paper tries to focus on corporate decision making process seen as the moment in which companies can decide and change their action to be more or less sustainable. Our research question can be considered quite simple in an advanced debate regarding sustainability, yet it is original. From previous studies, we found that in literature there is a gap regarding the importance of (ethical and benefit) values to foster sustainability. There are no paper that discuss both together and that highlight their importance in this context. Thus, as you can see, our research motivations for the issues addressed by this manuscript is not only intrinsic, but also built from the literature.

Regarding the academic rigor and the need of reproducible research, action research is a well know methodology applied in organizational contexts and already applied in sustainability discussion. This methodology is qualitative and follows more an idea of a study applied in a complex reality, than trying to introduce simplification based in a Cartesian method. The ability of the researcher is a key issue. If applied well, choices of action can be different between different researchers, but the final findings tend to converge. In the end, this methodology is as scientific as the quantitative ones.

 

Besides, you formulate a couple of assumptions that you may want to justify before posing them: p1l12: most companies are still not concerned with social and environmental issues. I m not sure about this at  all.

We agree. We changed this sentence.

 

Your RQ is problematic. I will not give a lecture here, but please be advised that research standards suggest to not use "how can...?" in a research question. The answer will systematically always be: In many ways! But that is not what we would be interested in, is it?

We agree with your commentary. We improved the research objective.

 

Your method is not clear to me, besides, I have strong doubts that you can successfully deal with the unschärfe that is a likely consequence of being the researcher and the unit of observation. Your methodology is not spelled out.

There is a great quantity of literature regarding action research. We already explain the method in the second paragraph of "Materials and Methods" section, but we improved introducing more information. The research is done in an organizational context, where are present high complexities especially regarding social aspects. In production engineering, we consider case study and action research as the best methodologies to catch these complexities and to have a deep and rich understanding of the researched phenomena. Our choice for this study is using action research because of the three limitations explained in the beginning of "Materials and Methods" section.

 

Your data is very thin, besides, with all due respect, the company in case may not be of major impact wrt sustainability.

That is one of the research limitations that we highlight in conclusion section ("Research limitations can be drawn from research design, as only one action research was conducted, and the timeframe of data collection was relatively short. Limitations of access to data in other startup design process and for longer period were mitigated by a deeper analysis of available data"). As explained in the first paragraph of "Materials and Methods" section we have no possibility to directly influence the decision making process of an established company or a startup that is already in the market. We put this limitation into the conclusion

Besides, we agree that the impact of one startup to global sustainable development is very limited. However, the idea is that each business has its role in global sustainable development, as they all together can provide positive or negative impact to society and the natural environment.

 

Discussion: Can you translate any of your findings to corporations indeed? I guess that all structures, including communication and decision making structures are systematically dissimilar from corporations.

Our contribution regards challenges for business models explicitly aiming to contribute to sustainable development. Therefore, we base our arguments in the discussion that these challenges can affect business decision design, not only for startups. We indicate that in the conclusion section that other organizations in different lifecycle stages should also be investigated.

 

Conclusions: I don't see that you answer the RQ.

We changed our research question into: "What are the main challenges of making business decisions based on moral values of sustainable development?” Thus, we hope it is clearer that we answered this question in Section 4 Discussions, as we listed the 5 challenges derived from our research.

 

I don't see any clear result wrt theory spelled out, no attempt for formulating a research plan. I would love to see what we can learn from your work.

The challenges pointed out by Discussion Section summarizes our key insights from our research. As they are challenges, we believe they are still open for further investigation on solution on how to cope with these challenges.

 

Besides that, I may add that, not being an English native speaker myself, I was a bit irritated by the lack of carefulness in the presentation. I don't expect a professionally copy-edited version for the review, but I think, that typos should be filtered out before a submission.

In Brazil we had really limited opportunities to receive founding for English revision. Understanding your suggestion, we paid a qualified company to improve the paper.

 

I am sorry, I could not be more positive, but I hope my remarks can help you a bit further.

All the best with advancing your work!  

We appreciate your efforts in reviewing our paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the research is interesting. However, reading the paper send the reader into a sort of mystery novels: you will find the answer at the end. I suggest authors to be less enigmatic. For example, in the part 3 (Results), the beginning of the phase C can explicitly say which were the three idea selected, at the beginning of phase D the authors can mention which was the business idea selected.

Also, in section 4, Discussions, the authors discuss about corporations/organizations, although the analysis is conducted on a start up:4.1. There are evident limits to applying sustainable development values to corporations., 4.2. In the current socioeconomic system, it is essential to consider as a priority the economic-financial aspect when introducing sustainability in companies.; 4.3. Challenges to include a substantive rationality into corporations for sustainable development: relation between moral values and utility values, and between collective and individual goals; 4.5. Centrality of the worker's role in providing sustainability in organizations.

Maybe the authors will make the discussion part more relevant to their analysis or they will adapt the purpose of the paper and the literature review on a start up. Or, they will provide evidences that their analysis, conducted on a start up, is valid for an already operating company/organization. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we answered to your suggestions below.

Thanks for your contributions.

 

The topic of the research is interesting. However, reading the paper send the reader into a sort of mystery novels: you will find the answer at the end. I suggest authors to be less enigmatic. For example, in the part 3 (Results), the beginning of the phase C can explicitly say which were the three idea selected, at the beginning of phase D the authors can mention which was the business idea selected.

Following the action research methodology we preferred to describe the research following the chronological events, explaining each step of the research. We improved the paragraph regarding phase C.

 

Also, in section 4, Discussions, the authors discuss about corporations/organizations, although the analysis is conducted on a start up:4.1. There are evident limits to applying sustainable development values to corporations., 4.2. In the current socioeconomic system, it is essential to consider as a priority the economic-financial aspect when introducing sustainability in companies.; 4.3. Challenges to include a substantive rationality into corporations for sustainable development: relation between moral values and utility values, and between collective and individual goals; 4.5. Centrality of the worker's role in providing sustainability in organizations.

Maybe the authors will make the discussion part more relevant to their analysis or they will adapt the purpose of the paper and the literature review on a start up. Or, they will provide evidences that their analysis, conducted on a start up, is valid for an already operating company/organization. 

The starting idea was implementing a research with results with an external validity to extend the findings to general companies (startups or already operating company/organization). As explained in the beginning of "materials and methods" section, we needed to consider some limitations. Especially the third limitation ("The main interest of the research is to analyze strategic decisions that would have the greatest impact on the companies' sustainability output. Company directors are difficult to be involved in academic research and would hardly be available to change the way they make their decisions") led our research to be focused on a startup environment. The challenges identified from this in-depth qualitative analysis of the action research can also be considered by operating businesses, but further investigations are still needed, as we pointed out in the conclusion section.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear colleagues,

let me start with a rather blunt remark: My review was first of all intended to help you improve the quality of your research. I was not to open a debate about the appropriateness of different types of research. Methodologically, I accept everything as long as it is appropriate for the research question and well performed. As a consequence, I will not reply to your replies. This is a review process, not a debate.

 

1) For a paper in 2020 about a rather recent topic, there is very recent literature, only roughly 20% stem from the last decennium. Besides, your format in the references is inconsistent.

 

2) Your research question is not clear. After working on CSR and BE for more than 25 years now, I do not know what "the moral values of sustainable development" actually refer to. You try to define that, but the definition is very short and without references to a debate about moral values. Only later, you make the reference to Bolis and take over the concept uncritically. The examples for incorporating macro moral values in decision making are not convincing: You mention that economic value o not become the main objective but do not demonstrate that they become a means and not an end. Besides, you seem to equal value and utility which makes me wonder why we use these two different words at all.

 

3) Is it on purpose that your research question focuses on business decisions whereas your U of O is strategic decisions? I ask this because not every business decision is strategic in nature.

 

4) In your abstract, you mention three key challenges: 1) We don't know how to do it, 2) profit is more important than sustainability 3) conflicts between moral and benefit values (which, to me, looks like a retake on (2)) 4) personal moral values of stakeholders and 5) engaging workforce in sustainable values. To be honest, this insight does not seem to be very novel to me.

 

5) line 26, abstract. Here, you refer to business models. Are we really discussing business models in this context? There is an entire debate about theses models, but I don’t think that this paper engages in this debate.

 

6) l29: After 30 years of empirical research on Sustainability and CSR, you really argue that: [...] investigate decision rationalities to enable sustainability in practice, as this is usually a
theoretical discussion. 

Just to mention a few: 

Tarne, P., Lehmann, A. & Finkbeiner, M. Introducing weights to life cycle sustainability assessment—how do decision-makers weight sustainability dimensions?. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 530–542 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1468-2

Responsibility accounting, managerial action and ‘a counter-ability’: Relating the physical and virtual spaces of decision-making

Niels JosephLennon, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2019.101062

 

Corporate social responsibility and hotel performance: A view from Tehran, Iran

ZahedGhaderi^aManouchehrMirzapour^bJoan C.Henderson^cScottRichardson^d

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2018.10.007

 

7) I think I indicated this already but I don’t think that your literature review in the introduction is close to complete.

 

8) Even though I do question the method of action research for this question, I don’t think that the empirical context is appropriate for your research question, since it is formulated for “organizations”. Startups, however, are very specific. Of course, there is not only one archetypical organization, but startups carry so many specifics that it might be worth focussing your research specifically on startups. That would, however, change the research question – and the literature research. Especially the lack of environmental impact makes it difficult to relate this company to sustainability, given the fact that environmental sustainability is a majorly important aspect of sustainability.

9) p10, l 408: “Thus, the challenge for an organization that wants to include substantive rationality for 409 sustainable development in its decision-making processes is to align its moral and benefit values and 410 those of its stakeholders' with the values of sustainable development (see Figure 1). If the company is 411 unable to influence the values of its stakeholders, it will be difficult to have an economic 412 development different from its current one.”

1. a) the “ ’ ” behind stakeholders does not seem to make sense to me.
2. b) Your description of figure 1 is insufficiently clear to me.
3. c) Systematically, if I understand stakeholder approaches correctly, and I think I would, it is virtually impossible to influence the value system of (all) stakeholders.

10) p10 l466 (all your pages seem to be p 10, by the way, which looks a bit sloppy to me): However, why is there still so little concern about 467 social and environmental goals in the corporate context, driven strongly by short-term economic 468 motivations? If I look at organizations, there is at least a lot of concern for environmental sustainability in their communication. Looking at Naturate, Brazil, their entire business model is built on sutstainability. Opening the homepage of whatever company, they brag with being so sustainable. So, it is a very strong assumption that there is no concern for sustainability.

Author Response

Dear colleagues,

let me start with a rather blunt remark: My review was first of all intended to help you improve the quality of your research. I was not to open a debate about the appropriateness of different types of research. Methodologically, I accept everything as long as it is appropriate for the research question and well performed. As a consequence, I will not reply to your replies. This is a review process, not a debate.

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate the time and effort to review our manuscript. We understand your position to help improve the quality of the research, as we are also reviewers of high impact factor journals. A healthy debate with academic peers can only benefit the scientific knowledge on the field. We apologize, if our last letter gave you the impression of anything different of what we have just stated. Not being native English speakers can sometimes bring impressions from our responses that do not translate what we really feel and think. We hope this response letter is clearer.

In the specific case of the research method, your comments helped us understand that what we wrote about action research was not enough. Thus, we improved the text in this last revision. Reading all your following commentaries, we believe that your external view is essential to improve our research. Many times, some aspects that are obvious for us are not obvious for other readers. Probably your research background is different from ours, so we need to improve more our manuscript to leave the paper suitable for a good range of readers.

However, we believe that it is important to recognize that probably we have different backgrounds with a different (but, I think, complementary) epistemology and focus regarding sustainability.  Our research field is in production engineering and psychology, and we studied sustainability starting from social aspect, especially the work issue (from TBL concept and stakeholder theory). Our publication in international journals cover the concept of “sustainable work”, the impact of corporate sustainability on work and workers, and the importance to focus on making decision processes to improve (or not) sustainability into organizations. So, although we know that the environment needs more and more care, this article focuses on a complementary aspect to that, which is the social sustainability, with the human being as the focus. This choice of investigation does not ignore the need to care for life in general, it only directs its attention to introduce new finding from a different point of view, the social one, that are not the traditional ones focused on natural environment. We value your experience and when you write “After working on CSR and BE for more than 25 years now, I do not know what "the moral values of sustainable development" actually refer to”, we interpreted it that we are in the right way, complementing the literature on sustainability with this specific approach. We are trying to complement the environmental aspect of sustainability with some new perspectives.

Following, we present the modifications performed based on your review.

1) For a paper in 2020 about a rather recent topic, there is very recent literature, only roughly 20% stem from the last decennium. Besides, your format in the references is inconsistent.

 We updated the references to include more recent publications and reviewed the format.

 

2) Your research question is not clear. After working on CSR and BE for more than 25 years now, I do not know what "the moral values of sustainable development" actually refer to. You try to define that, but the definition is very short and without references to a debate about moral values. Only later, you make the reference to Bolis and take over the concept uncritically. The examples for incorporating macro moral values in decision making are not convincing: You mention that economic value o not become the main objective but do not demonstrate that they become a means and not an end. Besides, you seem to equal value and utility which makes me wonder why we use these two different words at all.

We are trying to complement the environmental aspect of sustainability with some new perspectives. We based our paper on the “moral values ​​of sustainable development" developed by Bolis et. All (2017) for two reasons. The first, the literature regarding sustainable development tends to link moral values ​​only to environmental aspects. The second reason is that the selected paper is based on an extensive structured literature review, analyzing 151 papers in depth.

We removed the mentions to utility value, as it refers to benefit value, retrieved from the sustainable business model literature.

 

3) Is it on purpose that your research question focuses on business decisions whereas your U of O is strategic decisions? I ask this because not every business decision is strategic in nature.

Thank you for pointing out this issue. We agree that business decision can also be operational. In Section 2 (Materials and Methods), Paragraph 3, we included the following sentence:  

“Operational decisions were also made during the startup development, but methodologically it was not possible to consider them as a unit of analysis of the action research. Analyzing this large number of operational decisions would not be possible and suitable for the present research design”.

 

4) In your abstract, you mention three key challenges: 1) We don't know how to do it, 2) profit is more important than sustainability 3) conflicts between moral and benefit values (which, to me, looks like a retake on (2)) 4) personal moral values of stakeholders and 5) engaging workforce in sustainable values. To be honest, this insight does not seem to be very novel to me.

We understand that these challenges can seem obvious on a first look, after we see them explicitly listed. However, the complex issue of integrating sustainability into organizations’ strategies and business models is still not resolved and is open for discussions. This means that this problem needs to be better understood and the way we did this so far needs to go further. In our research, we seek to somehow support the development of solutions to address this issue, by dividing it into more specific challenges. Throughout the manuscript we try to converge – let´s say – a “vocabulary”, so we can express ourselves better to follow this debate in the scientific community. This “vocabulary” encompasses our key constructs: rationalities for decisions, moral values for sustainable development, benefit-values proposed, created and delivered by business models, among others. Each construct is complex and bring a series of implications. The combination of them is, therefore, also complex. But in our research, we try to express them in our research design and results, but this simplification always implies in limitations, as expected. To our best of knowledge, we did not find previous researches that brought together these constructs (rationalities for decisions, moral values for sustainable development, benefit-values proposed, created and delivered by business models, among others.) into a theoretical and empirical discussion about sustainability. This the novelty lies not only in the attempt to increase understanding on why companies are still struggling to be sustainable, but also in the research rationale (theoretical constructs and empirical evidence) to sustain each of the five challenges listed by the study. 

 

5) line 26, abstract. Here, you refer to business models. Are we really discussing business models in this context? There is an entire debate about theses models, but I don’t think that this paper engages in this debate.

We agree that the paper does not engage in the debate of the different configurations of sustainable business models. However, it finds support on this literature, when it used the concept of value (specifically we named “benefit value”), which is key to the literature of sustainable business model. To avoid mismatch of expectations for readers, we indicated this delimitation of research scope in Section 1 (introduction), last lines of Paragraph 4.

 

6) l29: After 30 years of empirical research on Sustainability and CSR, you really argue that: [...] investigate decision rationalities to enable sustainability in practice, as this is usually a
theoretical discussion. 

Just to mention a few: 

Tarne, P., Lehmann, A. & Finkbeiner, M. Introducing weights to life cycle sustainability assessment—how do decision-makers weight sustainability dimensions?. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 530–542 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1468-2

Responsibility accounting, managerial action and ‘a counter-ability’: Relating the physical and virtual spaces of decision-making

Niels JosephLennon, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2019.101062 Corporate social responsibility and hotel performance: A view from Tehran, Iran

ZahedGhaderi^aManouchehrMirzapour^bJoan C.Henderson^cScottRichardson^d https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2018.10.007

 In Section 1 (Introduction) Paragraph 4, We included arguments about decision making in the context of sustainability to better explain the current findings. Two of the suggested papers (Tarne, Lehmann and Finkbeiner, 2019; Lennon, 2019), together with other recent publications were inserted in this argument. We reformulated this paragraph to provide better explanations.

 

 

7) I think I indicated this already but I don’t think that your literature review in the introduction is close to complete.

In this version, we reinforced the literature review with arguments on business models (Section 1, Paragraph 3) and on decision-making in the context of sustainability (Section 1, Paragraph 4). We hope this fills the missing points. 

 

8) Even though I do question the method of action research for this question, I don’t think that the empirical context is appropriate for your research question, since it is formulated for “organizations”. Startups, however, are very specific. Of course, there is not only one archetypical organization, but startups carry so many specifics that it might be worth focussing your research specifically on startups. That would, however, change the research question – and the literature research. Especially the lack of environmental impact makes it difficult to relate this company to sustainability, given the fact that environmental sustainability is a majorly important aspect of sustainability.

We understand your concern and do recognize  our research limitations, as we describe them in the Section 5 (Conclusions). However, our research design was motivated by the research gap concerning the implications of specific decision-making rationalities to improve sustainability in organizations. With this in mind, we considered other research methods, such as survey and case studies, but none of those can bring the epistemological approach that we propose in this study. We wanted to bring a much deeper understanding at the complex issue of decision making that these other methods were not able to provide. So, action research in the context of a startup implementation  was the most suitable research method that we found to address our initial research motivation. This is why we did not start our research with a research question focused on startups.

 

9) p10, l 408: “Thus, the challenge for an organization that wants to include substantive rationality for 409 sustainable development in its decision-making processes is to align its moral and benefit values and 410 those of its stakeholders' with the values of sustainable development (see Figure 1). If the company is 411 unable to influence the values of its stakeholders, it will be difficult to have an economic 412 development different from its current one.”

1. a) the “ ’ ” behind stakeholders does not seem to make sense to me.

We corrected this mistake.

 

1. b) Your description of figure 1 is insufficiently clear to me.

We improved the explanation of Figure 1 to make it clearer.

 

1. c) Systematically, if I understand stakeholder approaches correctly, and I think I would, it is virtually impossible to influence the value system of (all) stakeholders.

We did not mean to imply that the companies need to change the value system of all stakeholders, as we agree this is impossible. We rephrased the sentence to avoid this interpretation and explained better Figure 1.

 

 

10) p10 l466 (all your pages seem to be p 10, by the way, which looks a bit sloppy to me): However, why is there still so little concern about 467 social and environmental goals in the corporate context, driven strongly by short-term economic 468 motivations? If I look at organizations, there is at least a lot of concern for environmental sustainability in their communication. Looking at Naturate, Brazil, their entire business model is built on sutstainability. Opening the homepage of whatever company, they brag with being so sustainable. So, it is a very strong assumption that there is no concern for sustainability.

About the page numbering, we corrected the numbering.

We changed this question to consider this comment: “However, why are there still so many opportunities for possible social and environmental improvements in the corporate context?”

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors operated most of the suggested changes.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate the time and effort to review our manuscript.

Best regards,

The authors.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear colleagues,

I have been with you on this journey for a while now. I am happy I could contribute to improving your paper, however, I am still missing important points and I do suggest you have a closer look into the following two remarks:

1) Please be explicit in formulating your research question. I have made this point twice and still, it is unclear to me what your explanans actually is.

2) Your abstract is still not to the point.

3) You still use descriptions without references that are debatable

4) I was looking for your theoretical contribution earlier on and I still am, I must admit.

 

Good luck with your work!