B Impact Assessment as a Sustainable Tool: Analysis of the Certification Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving the opportunity to read such an interesting paper.

For a  better and accurate model I recommend the authors to eliminate from the model the extreme value. For example in Fig 2. - workers values greater then 40, community greater than 58, environment 45,  customers 46 (the bullets), in  Fig 3 - values with global score greater than 130, in Fig. 5 also all the bullets. Then repeat all the statistical analysis.

In lines 391-395 I would prefer an Sk and Ku between -1 and 1. You have some values that are not included in this interval - maybe because of the outliers from the figures above that I recommend to exclude.

Overall the information presented it makes sense to me.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Excellent work. Very well structured,  with a critical and current problem. Keep it on in your future researches.

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Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting; however, it is not clear what the authors are trying to achieve with this study. The authors test a popular assessment tool using confirmatory factor analysis and finds that the model is weak. However, there is no in-depth discussion or recommendations that follow. In fact, the discussion needs to be grounded in previous research findings in regard to CSR/sustainability indices/assessment tools/initiatives. Unfortunately, I am really not sure what the point is here. Further, the hypothesis does not seem to be written correctly. First, it should be stated prior to the methods section. Second, currently it is descriptive. In other words, it doesn't state what the authors are trying to test in this study. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend publication unless major changes are made to the discussion section and possibly recommendations are added for future research and practice.  

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The paper is well structured and presented in a very meaningful manner. It definitely adds a value to the existed literature. There are minor corrections to be considered. This includes:

• Line 169 page 4, studies [28] & [29] do not reference to any presented argument(s) unless the preceding para.  
•  The word of Table in all text should start with capital letter (e.g. Line 199, L. 223)
•  Paragraph presented after Table 2 (page 7) is a repetitive content to what has been presented in the Table. It could be removed or move to footnote. 
•  It is better to show the P-values in Table 3 rather than (***) although a note is indicated in this regard. 
•  Very good practical recommendations and criticism to the B Corp certification have been presented in the last para. of section (6). No any future research recommendations have been suggested by the respected authors.

References list is well prepared. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 5 Report

Title: The title demands a review because there isn’t a connection between the first part and the second one. We understand what the authors intend to inform us after reading the paper. Even though this was clear to me, the title doesn’t show the real idea developed in the paper. The objective is a good guide for the title.

Abstract: The content is well organized, but the results need some to attract the reader. What is the main result of the B assessment with the confirmatory analysis? Besides, the contribution isn’t clear here.

Introduction: This section demands more attention because there are some empty spaces to fill. The authors should explain better what is B Impact Assessment. What is its contribution to the structure of a model using Confirmatory Analysis? For me, lines 39 and 40 show the aim of the paper, but the idea is different from the ones presented in the abstract (“The main objective is to understand the B Impact Assessment, verifying its added value in the sustainability process and socio-economic development of the business sector”). The sentence in the Introduction is more complete than the main objective in the Abstract. The ‘areas’ represent a broader goal than the main dimensions of sustainability (Triple Bottom Line).

Literature review: The lines from 70 to 82 could be summarized, and cut and paste in the Introduction section. I suggest cutting the text from lines 90 to 103 because it’s quite an advertisement for the B Certificate. The content in this section is exclusively dedicated to the Certification and the Corporation which offers it, there isn’t any scientific information there. The section demands a literature review about the theme, as the relationship between the certificate with adding value, sustainability, and the ‘areas’ governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. What is the idea of the assessment of sustainability, in these areas? This discussion is the basis of the paper, related to the objective, and connected with Figure 1 presented in the next section, Method. Even though the areas are from B Lab, the authors should study and related them to sustainability and value creation. There isn’t a literature review in this work.

Method: In the Abstract, the objective added an economic dimension to the development, but in lines 180 and 181 the impact to be measured includes just environmental and social. It was not clear to me who is the author of Figure 1, the B Lab, or the authors of this paper? There isn’t a source below the Title of Figure 1, though after that seems that B Corporation is the owner of it. The source of data from all companies in the sample isn’t clear, is B Corporation (site) or authors contact all these companies and did the survey? I understood that the data is from the B Corporation website. I accessed the link available in line 191 and there was a message ‘404 page not found, but when I clicked on ‘What is B Corporation’, I found the ‘areas’ and the steps for a company that intends to assess its practices and be certified. The authors should develop more theory than describe a model which has already existed.

Table 2 and the paragraph after it is a repetition of Figure 1 and Table 1, could be cut. It’s clever to reduce the number of companies, though it isn’t clear who contacts the companies, the authors or Company B?

The hypothesis is interesting when they come from a discussion in the literature review to the field research to test a theory (models, methods, frameworks, etc). Suddenly, appears one in the Method section, in a paper with a limited presentation of a technical model/certificate from an existed company. 

Results: The sentence from line 137 to line 138 isn’t clear when I saw Figure 6. The authors could use a standard for a plural of index word, ‘indices’ (345) or ‘indexes’ (362). In line 384 the authors should substitute ‘chapter’ for ‘section’. The authors presented and analyzed the variables/areas of certification with many models, it is interesting and is a basis for analysis in the next section.

Discussion: In the first sentence, what is the topic that the authors mentioned? What source provided that information? The analysis is interesting, but demands more comparisons and explanations for cuts and adds. For me, the answer to Hypothesis 1 isn’t clear. The authors should reflect the presence of that in the text. The Cronbach’s Alpha ‘selected’ just ‘environment’ area of the B Lab model. This is an interesting result, which could be more analyzed with other assessment models presented in the text, to say what the authors wrote at the end of the section.

Conclusion: I just see one objective, but in the first sentence the authors wrote ‘objectives’. Where are they? The suggestions are interesting, but demand more analysis in the previous section.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulation!

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Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your revisions. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 5 Report

The text has some improvements, but there are some points that still demand more attention.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

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