Role of Digital Transformation for Achieving Sustainability: Mediated Role of Stakeholders, Key Capabilities, and Technology

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to review the paper. The paper is very interesting and I like reading it. However, i observed few issue;

(1) The title is very long and does not reflect the catch point instantly. Please make it simple and comprehensive. For Example Role of Digital transformation for achieving Sustainability: Mediated Role of stakeholders, key capabilities, and Technology.....Rest is automatically inbuilt..

(2) The work is key capabilities in the literature is called Digital Capabilities that combine all three (key capabilities, technology, digital capabilities for transformation). Therefore, it is important to study to refer some digital capabilities recent research, such as; Yoshikuni, A.C. and Dwivedi, R., 2023. The role of enterprise information systems strategies enabled strategy-making on organizational innovativeness: a resource orchestration perspective. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 36(1), pp.172-196.

(3) The role of stakeholders in Digital transformation is immense and can not be possible. The seminal work on this issue can be referred and will make ...How Digital Transformation Requires Stakeholder Support...Dwivedi, R. and Momaya, K., 2003. Stakeholder flexibility in e-business environment: A case of an automobile company. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 4(3), pp.21-32.

Goel, S., Dwivedi, R. and Sherry, A., 2012. Role of key stakeholders in successful e-governance programs: Conceptual framework.

These citations will demonstrate the role of stakeholders in digital transformation. 

(3) The analysis and method part is adequate. 

The only issue related to the basic terminology and making it correct. 

(4) IT capabilities view is based on Resource Based Theory view...

Please align the following theories ...Digital Transformation, Stakeholder Theory, Resource Based View of the Organization, IT Capabilities to make it more strong. 

 

Okay

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

 

Best regrardas.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a literature review of recent studies on the topic of introducing digital technologies for sustainable development in small and medium-sized enterprises. The relevance of this topic is determined by the fact that one of the possible circular business models of an enterprise is a dematerialization model based on the transfer of goods and services into their digital counterparts. In addition, the introduction of digital technologies can dramatically improve the traceability of the flow of resources and energy in the enterprise.

However, there are a number of drawbacks in the article:

1) The structure of the article is incomprehensible. Section 2 “Materials and methods” does not describe neither materials nor methods. This section, in fact, is a continuation of the introduction and can be significantly reduced.

2) The methodology of the systematic literature review is used in a highly truncated form. The authors did not analyze the distribution of articles by subject, by methodology, by approach, by industry, etc. There is also no distribution of articles by journals, areas of knowledge.

3) The set of keywords used in the search greatly narrows the search area, since the word "sustainability" can be easily replaced by its synonyms and similar concepts, for example, the concept of "circular business model".

4) The answers to the research questions are not formulated clearly enough, the novelty of the author's conclusions is doubtful.

 

5) Improve the abstract section using traditional structure –relevance, research gap, aim, methodology, results

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

English is not readable in some places. For example, page 1, line 36.  Extensive editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

 

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

 

Dear Author/s,

Many thanks for offering me the privilege to review your paper entitled “Sustainability through Digital Transformation for MSMEs: Exploring the role of stakeholders, key capabilities, and technologies for creating long-term value”. Despite the originality of topic, I’d recommend some major changes as follows:

 

- Abstract: I’d advice to reinforce and highlight originality, practical, and theoretical implications in it. Authors should better emphasize the research goals as well as the research design, placing more emphasis on the state of the art and on contributions of the paper.

 

- Introduction: I consider this section a bit convoluted and, for that, hard to follow.

Firstly, starting from the beginning, I’d suggest Authors to better explain the focus of the research and to specify the scope of the paper. Secondly, please try to revamp the Introduction structure as follow: (i) define the contest of the analysis; (ii) clearly explain the gap in the literature that the paper wants to fill; (iii) point out the originality of the article (iv) describe the structure of the paper. Thirdly, I’d like to suggest Authors to better outline the scope of the research since from the Introduction section. Fourthly, certain unclear and long fragment sentences have affected the organization of research idea starting from the first paragraph. Please, revamp the whole section.

 

- Theoretical Background: It is recommended that Authors give a detailed discussion on each of the theoretical frameworks used and the relationship deduced from these frameworks to support this study. For this reason, it would be relevant to explore the themes of Dynamic Capabilities and others to understand the reason why Authors led to adopt this perspective of analysis.

Please, you can consider these international studies:

·      Scuotto, V., Magni, D., Palladino, R., & Nicotra, M. (2022). Triggering disruptive technology absorptive capacity by CIOs. Explorative research on a micro-foundation lens. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, 121234.

·      Santoro, G., Thrassou, A., Bresciani, S., & Del Giudice, M. (2019). Do knowledge management and dynamic capabilities affect ambidextrous entrepreneurial intensity and firms’ performance?. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

·      Magni, D., Palladino, R., Papa, A., & Cailleba, P. (2022). Exploring the journey of Responsible Business Model Innovation in Asian companies: A review and future research agenda. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 1-30.

·      Singh, S. K., & Del Giudice, M. (2019). Big data analytics, dynamic capabilities and firm performance. Management Decision.

 

- Material and Method and Results: these sections appear well constructed. Well done!

 

- Discussions and Conclusion: Since I deem that the discussion is relevant to confute or support previous research, I’d reinforce this section properly. Yet, starting from the findings, I would suggest Authors to explain better the novelty of results and the main theoretical but also managerial implications of the paper. Alongside, please strengthen the discussion along with the rest of the article.

 

Quality of communication: The quality of communication is good. Nonetheless, a professional proof-reading would certainly increase the overall quality of the paper, thus meeting the international standards for peer-reviewed research.

 

I hope my advice will be useful for a further improvement of your paper.

Best Regards and Good Luck.

 

Quality of communication: The quality of communication is good. Nonetheless, a professional proof-reading would certainly increase the overall quality of the paper, thus meeting the international standards for peer-reviewed research.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

 

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors did a great job on the text and eliminated most of the shortcomings noted in the first round of peer review. I think that in this form the article can be published

Reviewer 3 Report

Good luck