The Nexus between Employee Engagement and Performance Management Processes—Fruška Gora National Park (Serbia) Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an important topic and paper relies on primary survey data. However, there are several fundamental issues which lead to rejecting the draft article.

1) It is difficult to see a connection between the article and sustainability in general and themes covered by Sustainability (journal) in general. 

2) Most of literature used in the literature review is relatively old. There must be a lots of literature from the last decade covering employee engagement and firm performance. 

3) There many issues with research methods that need to be clarified. What was the population of the study? How representative is sample? How exactly was it carried out? 

4) Data and methods used in the article do not allow to make many conclusions and claims presented in the paper. Hypotheses cannot be rejected or fail to reject. For instance, authors write in the end "These findings confirmed the main hypothesis H - employee engagement within the performance management process is a key item for employee productivity". There is no data about employee productivity in the paper. Exploration of correlations between employee engagement and productivity would require completely different methods than simple survey data. 

5) The whole article needs a clearer focus. Starting with introduction which discusses motivation in first paragraph and ending with conclusion where first sentence suddenly about "financial results", the article tries to cover  unconvincingly too many issues.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors examine the nexus between employee engagement and performance management process, having as their case study the – Fruška Gora National Park (Serbia). I think that the following points are necessary to improve paper’s focus/analysis.

1.      The abstract of the paper needs rewriting. Please remove italics and illustrate the main findings of your research.

2.      I believe that it is important to highlight the consequences of COVID-19 on SMEs. An interesting paper which discusses them is Meramveliotakis and Manioudis (2021). "Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and Small Business in Greece: Small Is Not Beautiful" Administrative Sciences 11, no. 3: 90. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci11030090. COVID-19 may be an accelerator of employee engagement. I think that it will be a useful addition in your introduction.

3.      The literature review section should be enriched by more recent literature. See for example, Awan et al. (2020). “Effectiveness of Performance Management System for Employee Performance through Engagement”. SAGE Open https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244020969383.  

4.      Additionally you should see pieces as Mone et al. (2011). “Performance Management at the Wheel: Driving Employee Engagement in Organizations” Journal of Business and Psychology 26, 205-212.

5.       Some information of the National Park Fruška gora should be added (number of employees, turnover, visitors etc.).

6.      The discussion section should be further elaborated.

Minor points

The paper needs extensive editing of English language and style. Some points: 

a.       It is not Likert type, but Likert scale (page 3)

b.      as “an operation”, not “a operation” (page 3)

c.       The parenthesis in line 6, should be removed (page 4)

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

References are rather old for the most part. The paper appears to provide sound results, which, however, have been known for many parts. For example: Bryman (2007) has advanced a set of leadership features that predict departmental effectiveness, such as: treating academic staff fairly and with integrity, being trustworthy and having personal integrity, encouraging open communication, clear sense of direction/strategic vision, making appointments that enhance the department’s reputation, etc. Still, the work can be a valuable addition as it is a case study, and highlight key aspects well.

 

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the authors for their corrections and their kind reply. I believe that the revisions improved the manuscript.

Some points:

a) You have to add information about profits in the section on research methodology. 

 

b) I believe that a reference to COVID-19 is necessary due to its devasting consequences. We have to keep in mind that COVID-19 may accelerate future organisational directions. As the authors kindly reply their response, the park employs 161 workers. Thus, according to the European Definition of SMEs, the park is a medium enterprise (see SME definition (europa.eu). I proposed Meramveliotakis and Manioudis (2021) as they present how COVID-19 affected SMEs in Greece, a country nearby Serbia. In my view, this point should be stressed, in some lines, in your introduction.

 

Author Response

1. You have to add information about profits in the section on research methodology. 

- We have had add information about profits for the pandemic year.

 

2. I believe that a reference to COVID-19 is necessary due to its devasting consequences. We have to keep in mind that COVID-19 may accelerate future organisational directions. As the authors kindly reply their response, the park employs 161 workers. Thus, according to the European Definition of SMEs, the park is a medium enterprise (see SME definition (europa.eu). I proposed Meramveliotakis and Manioudis (2021) as they present how COVID-19 affected SMEs in Greece, a country nearby Serbia. In my view, this point should be stressed, in some lines, in your introduction.

- Thank you for your sugestion. This paper was wery useful. We have add pasus about this Covid-19 problem.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

I believe that the authors have sufficiently addressed my previous comments and that their additions have improved the paper.