The Influence of Systematic Strategic Planning and Strategic Business Innovation on the Sustainable Performance of Manufacturing SMEs: The Case of Palestine
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic proposed is trending, and the paper can contribute to the literature given that the SMEs' perspective is significantly neglected. The paper is also globally well written, which makes really easy to read it. The literature review also includes a significant number of recent research. Congratulations on that! Notwithstanding, some aspects can improve the overall quality of the paper:
1. The structure of the chapter indicates 1.0, 2.0, etc., instead of 1, 2, etc.
2. The introduction does not stress the paper's contribution, innovation, and relevance (sometimes, those aspects appear only implicitly); also, the paper does not provide its structure;
3. I would suggest a different structure for the paper, with the literature review comprising only the theoretical framework related to the dependent and independent variables. Then, point 3 would cover the hypotheses and methodology into two subpoints, which will also include, previously, the TBL and RBD theories that provide support for the hypotheses proposed.
4. On the other hand, I would avoid the current subpoints 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5, as their contents do not justify this division.
5. From the results onwards, the numbers are not correctly stated.
6. The results could be divided into the analysis and the discussion of the results.
7. Finally, the subpoints of the current discussion of the results could be included in the main conclusions and recommendations.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
A very interesting article showing important aspects in the operation of companies. In view of the growing energy and environmental problems, the authors should consider and refer to energy problems and the use of RES sources in the operation of enterprises, due to the limited energy resources we are currently dealing with. The authors may refer to e.g:
1. Chomać-Pierzecka, E.; Sobczak, A.; Urbańczyk, E. The RES market. Development of the RES market and public awareness of the economic and environmental dimension of the energy transition in Poland. Dimension of the Energy Transformation in Poland and Lithuania. Energie 2022, 15, 5461. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15155461.
2 Chomać-Pierzecka, E.; Sobczak, A.; Soboń, D. Wind energy market in Poland against the background of the Baltic countries in the era of COVID-19. Era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Energie 2022, 15, 2470. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/7/2470/htm.
The authors could have described the research methods and objectives set in the article more clearly and presented the conclusions and recommendations in more depth.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is although written clearly, with logical arguments and supported well from literature. It also relates to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a developing country and addresses a contemporary issue. However, few observations are here to improve the paper.
1- SMEs operate in a less formal manner hence the planning and innovation aspects would not be taken care of so well. Hence, authors should highlight more how they assured these aspects while choosing their sample. Did they rely solely on the response from the owner or any double-checking mechanism followed for it? In my opinion, for SMEs selection there must be defined some base criterion to check the veracity of the claims.
1- The paper covers the firm performance and strategic planning in a holistic perspective. Both of these constructs have several dimensions and each dimension has its own sub-dimensions but this paper surprisingly deals with these multidimensional constructs in a unitary perspective. For example product innovation, strategic innovation each is represented by one item which is not enough in my opinion. Authors should reconsider these constructs and include more items to assess these dimensions especially because they are focusing on small scale businesses.
2- The three dimensions covered under sustianable performance are formative constructs on the whole so authors should highlight how they took care of these formative constructs. I believe unbundling these three dimensions will provide more useful evidences. If put together, authors should be handling them carefully with enough validity and reliability tests to ensure robustness.
3- No control variables provided.
4- Please provide the details of construct items/questionnaire and the related demographics if it was the part of survey.
5- There are several grammatical and language problems, authors should proofread the document with the help of a professional proofreader to correct all mistakes.
6-Please revisit the limitations and theoretical implications section to strengthen the arguments and discussion.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The article deals with an important problem of improving the efficiency of a selected group of entrepreneurs in Palestine. This problem is of great value not only for theory, but also for practice, especially for companies operating in territories with similar economic and geopolitical conditions in the world. The article contains a very strong grounding of the problem in the world literature on the subject, correctly selected research methods, a clearly formulated goal and research hypotheses. The course of reasoning and inference do not raise any objections. I highly appreciate the structure of the work and a thorough discussion of the research results in comparison with other authors, as well as the proposed recommendations and conclusions.
The article requires minor editorial corrections adjusting some of its parts to the requirements of the "Sustainability" journal (headings, fonts, especially in tables, footnotes, numbering in the Bibliography, etc.).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
The introduction section must be completely changed. It must be split in two sections: Introduction section and Literature review section.
Overall, the instruction section must be focused in portraying a clear idea of what you want to study and why. Furthermore, the main gap to be fulfilled must be provided. It is not the right place to make a literature review as you did.
The methodology part is too divided into sub-chapters, I suggest reducing the number of sub-chapters here.
Subchapter 4.3 consists of only one sentence. I am sure that there is no need to create a subchapter for one sentence and expand the future research sub-chapter.
Describe the lack of research in more detail.
I suggest you to use only those related references that were published in the last 1-3 years in journals indexed in WoS/CA or SCOPUS.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our paper. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive suggestions and those of the reviewers. As a result, we have made significant efforts to satisfy the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions in the revision, making modifications to the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached please find the new version along with our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is improved still authors should consider some points here.
1. The questionnaire items and survey details are not provided in paper.
2. The authors have only considered single item scales for innovation and performance measurements and these constructs are combined. Authors need to clearly highlight the rationale behind this and how they dealt with these formative concepts. It is important because some unitary constructs may even not exist with some SMEs while okay with others.
Author Response
Dear Prof (Reviewer 3),
We want to thank you again for allowing us to revise our paper for the second round. We are very grateful for your comments and valuable feedback. We have taken on board your constructive feedback and suggestions. As a result, we have made significant efforts to address your concerns and suggestions in the second-round revision, modifying the paper and providing a detailed response to each comment and suggestion within our response/actions taken; document. We have also marked up the changes in the article by the track changes.
Attached, please find the new version and our response to your comments.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
