Exploring a Pathway to Sustainable Performance in Manufacturing Firms: The Interplay between Innovation Capabilities, Green Process, Product Innovations and Digital Leadership

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

REVIEW of the manuscript titled: sustainability-1675730

Exploring a Pathway to Sustainable Performance via Innovation Capabilities and Green Process Innovation: A Mediated and Moderated Model

Please find some of my observations.

            The title is descriptive but does not draw enough attention to the topic that the authors focused on mediated and moderated model between product innovation, process innovation but also digital leadership in manufacturing SMEs.

            The abstract is a concise summary of research conducted – the topic, the purpose of the methodology and the conclusions of the research.

            The structure of the paper was organized in several sections, a presentation of the topic, then a review of the literature on the formulation of the hypothesis. These are followed by the study methodology, the discussion about the chosen method, and finally the recommendations.

            The adoption of green process innovation is critical for SMEs to enhance their business performance. The authors should further develop the conclusions section - what are the barriers that can be identified in achieving the proposed objectives, to what extent the proposed moderate mediation model is a better solution in innovating green products and processes.

Like policies, the market could encourage companies to formulate and implement such strategies. It is known that the decision-making structure in an organization differs depending on the type of organization, it also differs from country to country. Stakeholders' opinions have a considerable influence on the application of green practices.

Research limitations are also needed to be presented in this section, e.g. To what extent the type of production of the company can be a barrier in the application of this model, also a comparison between the private sector and the public sector can be a topic of future research.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please find attached our response.

Thank you for your recommendations,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please clarify what you mean by unconventional resources (p. 2). 

It is not clear how the authors arrive at the statement that sustainability has not been investigated in the context of "green innovation" (p. 2) when there have been decades of sustainability research which form the backdrop of green innovation research rather than the other way round

The research gap posited to exist in the topic chosen by the paper is taken for granted but not backed up by evidence in the introduction and also not sufficiently so in chapter 2

It should be made clear how generalizable the results are and authors should formulate the conclusions (and the summary of these in the introduction) more tentatively. Overall  the study should avoid making too far stretched claims as to its uniqueness and take more care in rooting it in the literature (e. g. in the amply researched field of sustainability, leadership and innovation performance)

If the aspect of how digital leadership is tied to sustainability performance were the only unique contribution this would still be an interesting result. However, in order to make their case, authors need to more clearly define their concepts such as green process innovation by providing examples and measures for these concepts

Many statements chapter 2 are oversimplified and poorely backed up by theory, e. g.when authors state that digitization and innovation are related in a clearly positive way, this needs to be questioned against the backdrop of existing studies, e. g. taking account of digital rebound effects

Sustainability performance and sustainable performance need to be distinguished more carefully

H 4 does not seem to be well grounded considering the ample body of studies which model process innovations as distinct from product innovations and that there is a sequential relationship where process innovations follow product innovations 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please find attached our response.

Thank you,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf