A Novel Service Provision Mode for Sustainable Development of the Telecom Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the expansion of the literature, the addition of the section "Discussion and Limitations" and the editorial correction.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

    Thank you for your important guidance on our original manuscript and affirmation on the revisions. Your comments and suggestions are very valuable to improve the quality of our manuscript.

    Aiming at the limitations and the uncompleted work of this study, in the future, we will continue to do research on the practical application of the model and expect to improve the underlying theoretical design.

    Once again, thanks a lot and best regards.

 

    Yours sincerely,

    Dr. Xueyan Wang

    Prof. Hong Wu

Reviewer 2 Report

I find the paper very interesting and in my opinion it satisfies all the requirements. Note that it has already been improved.
In the future, I believe that the authors should continue to investigate the practical application of the model and, perhaps, improve the underlying theoretical design.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

    Thank you for your important guidance on our original manuscript and affirmation on the revisions. Your comments and suggestions are very valuable to improve the quality of our manuscript.

    Aiming at the limitations and the uncompleted work of this study, just like your kindly reminder, in the future, we will continue to do research on the practical application of the model and expect to improve the underlying theoretical design.

    Once again, thanks a lot and best regards.

 

    Yours sincerely,

    Dr. Xueyan Wang

    Prof. Hong Wu

Reviewer 3 Report

This study focused on technological issues such as time delays and bandwidth. However, to provide more useful and efficient services for customer, this study has to consider service fees, the number of service contents,

The telecom companies developed and distributed the new and innovative services such as navigation services, and streaming music. Although developing customized services and making network resources effectively are important issues, the network effect and economics of scales are critical sources to create profits in communication industry. However, this study do not consider this the network effect and economics of scales into simulations.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

    Thank you for your valuable guidance on our manuscript last time and this time, which is of great help to improve the quality of it. According to your constructive comments and suggestions, we have tried our best to revise the manuscript point by point and expect the revisions can make our manuscript more acceptable. The revisions are highlighted by using the “Track Changes” function in Microsoft Word in the second revised manuscript. Detailed responds are shown in the attachment.

    Once again, thanks a lot and best regards.

 

    Yours sincerely,

    Dr. Xueyan Wang

    Prof. Hong Wu

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The comments were considered in the revised version. 

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 Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. I found the topic of your research interesting.  I do have several major suggestions.

• Literature is too narrow. ou should use more literature on the research problem.
• The definition of the business model should be extended (verse 60).
• New publications are missing in several places.
• A lot of new articles have been written in the area of innovative and sustainable business models. Take a look at, e.g .:
  • Massa, L., Tucci, C. L., & Afuah, A. (2017). A critical assessment of business model research. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 73-104.
  • Geissdoerfer, M., Vladimirova, D., & Evans, S. (2018). Sustainable business model innovation: A review. Journal of cleaner production, 198, 401-416.
  • Teece, D. J. (2018). Business models and dynamic capabilities. Long range planning, 51(1), 40-49.
• The literature is incorrectly cited. First names and surnames were changed. This applies to items 3, 4, 6, 7.
• The paragraph "Discussion" is necessary.
• You need the paragraph "Research limitations".

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This article needs to undergo quite a bit of revision before publication.  

Some of the terms used in the article are scarcely understandable: What telecom application scenarios mean? How "increasingly diverse"can they be ?

Most evidence rather points to the fact that there is increasing global homogenisation in this respect. Complex doesn't necessarily mean diverse.  Or perhaps wouldn't it be better to specify "technologically diverse”?

Is this due to breakneck technological developments? It is widely know that users'  requirements for network performance is becoming increasingly personalized. 

"Contradiction between users' requirements for delicate customization of services ". Do you mean DEDICATE? 

The article then introduces, suddenly, nearly casually, the notion of sustainable development as related to the Telecom industry. This fails to convince the reader that the authors are really engaged or familiar with the topic.

What has the argument to do with sustainability as a global trend? How far can collaboration and adaptation 

 How are business model innovation and technological innovation  related to sustainability?

Even the terms "advantages"  is unspecified: advantages for whom?

As for the methodology used, it is unclear how systematic the research is. 

In general, this paper seems to be much more concerned with innovation in business models and telecom service provisions, than sustainability as such. 

But the readers may hardly be interested in knowing about the business value of this mode or its influence factors or business oriented technological implementation schemes or network carrying capacity, insofar as these notions and facts remain too loosely connected to the issue of sustainability.

 The "coarse-grained customization style of services currently provided by telecom enterprises".  Unclear. 

What about regulation? To what extent are telecom companies able to avoid or are subjected to international norms and regulations ?  What about environmental regulation?

Actually, without exceptions all telecom corporations stress that their model is beneficial both to users and enterprises. They also know that they need to adopt sustainable agendas and commitments. But what is the point in them overtaking this? 

I strongly suggest the author to check the literature on greenwashing before resubmitting the article -- here or anywhere. See, for instance, 

- Greenwashing in the new millennium  - The Journal of Applied Business  

- Social accountability and corporate greenwashing - Journal of business ethics, 2003 

 - Scrutiny, norms, and selective disclosure: A global study of greenwashing   - Organization Science, 2016 

-  When are corporate environmental policies a form of greenwashing?- Business & Society, 2005   

- Actions speak louder than words: Greenwashing in corporate America J Vos - Notre Dame JL Ethics & Pub. Pol'y, 2009 

- The drivers of greenwashing - California management review, 2011 

- National sustainabilities, Political Geography, (2016) 51, pp. 53-62.

- How sustainability ratings might deter ‘greenwashing’: A closer look at ethical corporate communication', The Journal of Business Ethics, 102, 1, (2011) pp. 15.

Before being considered for publication, the article needs to be entirely rearranged in its focus, explaining what it can contribute to notions, ideas and practices of sustainability. 

In order to do so, it must absorb a certain amount of literature beyond the one indicated in this brief report. In other words, the authors need to engage in a little bit of extra reading, considering for instance how the notion of sustainable development goals (SDG) is subjected to multiple interpretations. See in particular the recent article:  Zeng, Yiwen, Maxwell, Sean, Runting, Rebecca K., et al. (2020) 'Environmental destruction not avoided with the Sustainable Development Goals', Nature Sustainability, 3, 10, pp. 795-798.

Where do telecom companies stand in respect to the findings of this and similar critical research on the limits of sustainability?

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author/authors,

Thank you for submitting this manuscript. The topic of the paper is interesting. It invites readers to become curios to find out if the suggested sustainable development might be applied to other services apart from telecom industry. The aim of the paper is a systematic research from the perspective of collaboration and adaptation between business model innovation and technological innovation. Main contribution of the manuscript is that the novel mode is beneficial both to telecom users and telecom enterprises.

Line 26-56: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. How it looks now, it seems to be like a nice story told by the author and not based on recent literature review. There are only 3 references used in the introduction section. The main aim of the work should be highlighted.

Suggestions: Please reconsider the introduction section. Consider the literature review for describing the context of the research and explain to scientist the purpose of the study. Explain also who will benefit from the research results.

 

The authors paid little attention to the quality of the presentation. The description of the analysis and the results are partially clear. There is still room for further explanations regarding the data and analysis.

Lines 68-89 – The section 2.1. refers to “Historical Changes and Challenge of Telecom Service Provision Mode”, but the text contains an enumeration 1, 2, 3 without any previous presentation of what this enumeration will be about. We assume that this connects to the title of the section, but the authors should be clear. Again, only 2 more references are not enough to provide high scientific base.

Figures – It is not clear if the figures provided are the authors contribution to the study or if they belong to other specialists. At least Figure to belong to Forrester, as the text says.

Line 107 – IoT refers to Internet of Thing but there is no previous corelation form the concept to the acronym.

Figure 2 – is very interesting, but there is not clear evidence on the relationship between the differential requirements for bandwidth and time-delay and the time-delay sensitivity. If this is clear from other sources, what is the importance of the correlation for the current study?

Line 115-116 – Are you sure you wanted to say “hope”? In addition, the idea is about the advancement of the development of intelligence and its contribution to the contradiction between customization degree and the costs. Unfortunately, this influence is not clear.

Line 116-118 – “Focusing on the new and requirements of telecom services…” Which are these characteristics? Why is the purpose of the study mentioned here again?

Line 144-149 – What economic theories? The correlation is right, but as long as a theory is mentioned, it should be clear.

Line 150-189 – Here, there is a new enumeration with numbers and bullets, but no paragraph describing them.

Figure 3 and 4 – Not enough described.

Table 1 and Figures 6-8 - Not sufficient description.

Suggestions: Please provide additional clarification on the abovementioned comments. Provide more scientific approach and clarity on the whole logic order of ideas. Add several references. The entire paper includes only 17 references. Identify some future directions.

 

Regarding the scientific soundness of the study, the authors have described the data analysis. The data are relevant for drawing the conclusions. The methods and tools are clearly described. Nevertheless, there is room for clearer description.

Suggestions: Reconsider Table and Figures. Provide clarification on the connection between the proposed model and the potential to be used to other industries. Think as if another researcher would like to reproduce the results.

 

 Discussion and Conclusion Sections. Limitations of the work should be integrated in this section. The authors did not consider future studies.

Suggestion: Please think on some limitations and include them in the discussion/conclusion section. Please consider the importance/relevance of the knowledge sharing in this area in the current pandemic context.

Some English editing and major Journal editing rules are also important to be revised.