Digital Leadership in an Ever-Changing World: A Bibliometric Analysis of Trends and Challenges

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

At the end of the Abstract the originality of the study has to be reviewed. What the authors write gives for all bibliometric studies.

 

The introduction needs to be refined. I also recommend improving the main thread of the text. 

I am not convinced that the GAP in the literature exists. The same needs to be justified with more relevant literature. 

I recommend formulating 2 more research questions that should be answered in the conclusion.

In addition to the research questions I recommend clearly stating the aim of the study.

I recommend revising the introduction as follows:

1- Provide a framework to the reader

2- Problematics of the subject under analysis

3- Point out the GAP of the literature based on the literature 

4- Purpose of the study 

5- Originality of the study

6- Main results and contributions (to engage the reader)

 

A good Introduction section should be answering several questions: Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What are research questions? What has been studied? What are your contributions? Why is to propose this particular method? Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument. At the moment, research questions are unclear.

 

The methodology is worrying and needs to be extensively revised. 

 

The authors in the criteria they apply for data extraction do not justify anything. Everything has to be justified and substantiated with authors who have already applied similar criteria.

 

Why did they use scopus and not another database? I recommend that they include at least hands on web of science.

 

The criterion "All Open Access" does not seem acceptable to me. And other publications do not matter? They certainly do.

 

How were the search terms selected? This is not understandable. 

 

This criterion is also not understandable "limited to 123 the period 2018-2022"? We are already in the middle of 2023. It would be pertinent and current to include publications from 2023.

 

There are no publications prior to 2018?

 

The Paper in terms of methodology presents serious doubts which puts the whole study in question.

 

In the results there are more interesting analyses than the ones the authors make.

 

For example, in "Table 2. Most relevant journals with the greatest impact", it was interesting to indicate the citations. They only indicate the number of documents. It would be interesting to also know the quartile and when entering the WOS database, also indicate the impact factor.

 

"Table 3. Most relevant authors with the greatest impact." And the citations of each author?

 

"Table 4. Most cited documents." Do they put the DOI here? This analysis adds nothing.

 

It would be pertinent to do an analysis of the methodologies and methods used in all the papers in the sample and make a table summarizing them.

 

"Figure 5. Index keywords." They make this figure, but then little analysis is done. What do these results point to? The same comment could be made to other analyses.

 

"Table 5. Industrial sectors." Underneath this table they have percentages. But in the table are not the percentages.

 

It would be more interesting to do a cluster analysis with vosviewer.

 

"Table 6: Topics for future research. After identifying 10 it would be pertinent to qualitatively analyze the articles extracted and indicate future lines of research, citing the authors, for each of the 10 areas identified.

I recommend improving the conclusion as follows (order of ideas):

1. Remember the purpose of the study

2. Main findings (answering the research questions)

3. Theoretical implications

4. Practical implications

5. Social implications (if applicable)

6. Originality of the study

7. Limitations of the study

8. Future lines of research

 

I recommend creating subsections for the conclusion.

For these 8 points we can create sub-sections as follows:

6.1 Main results

6.2 Theoretical implications

6.3 Practical implications (business, academia, government/policy, society - where applicable)

6.4.Limitations and future lines of research

 

In the conclusion it must be clear, the answers to the research questions formulated in the introduction.

What does this study add to science?

The theoretical and practical implications are fundamental.

The English needs to be revised, preferably by a native speaker.

In the revision I ask the authors to rebuttal letter and include the responses to all recommendations. Also mark in a different colour the revisions made.

The English needs to be revised, preferably by a native speaker.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The topic of research Digital leadership as a strategy for the digitization of industrial sectors is actual and will depend on the competence development of their leaders to assume the digital transformation. 

Comments and suggestions:

1. Fig. 5 is not readable. Ego should be increased.

2. In Fig. 6 the horizontal axis is not clear. An unsuccessful form of graphical interpretation of the result was selected.

3. Dates in the table. 5 and Fig. 6 (vertical axis) are presented in the wrong format.

4. The set of researched terms should include "Dynamic leadership"

No comments

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear author(s),

I find your paper quite interesting. However, I think that there are some additional elements that xan improve your paper.

First, I think we need to see more on the importance and the lack of previously results on DL. Please, describe DL broader, it will be good to gave more pn the theme for future researchers.

Second, add a final part of the introduction to show the structure of your paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The introduction became extensive and does not follow what was previously lost. You don't create subsections in the introduction for example. Point 1.1. it reads like a literature review and not an introduction. On the other hand.

Research questions raised in the introduction are not answered in the conclusion.

It seems to me that with the analyzes carried out on the results it will not be possible to answer all these questions.

I am not convinced with the GAP of literature. This needs to be developed.

Still in the introduction what are the contributions of the study.

The “conductor thread” of the introduction is not good. I recommend again revising the introduction as follows:

1- Framing the reader

2- Issues of the topic under analysis

3- Show the GAP of the literature based on the literature

4- Purpose of the study

5- Originality of the study

6- Main results and contributions (to captivate the reader)

A good Introduction section should be answering several questions: Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What are research questions? What has been studied? What are your contributions? Why is to propose this particular method? Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument. At the moment, research questions are unclear.

 

The justification given by the authors for choosing the database is not scientifically acceptable. Have you seen any study that justifies the choice of the database in this way? If yes, cite authors in the document.

On the other hand, as indicated earlier, Web of Science publications should also be included.

I recommend justifying the exclusion criteria with authors who have already applied these criteria (cite the authors).

However, the methodology has improved.

In table 2 and 3 add a column with citations. Or is the citation the “TC” column? If yes, clarify what the abbreviation is.

It would be pertinent to analyze the methodologies and methods used in all the papers in the sample and make a table with their summary (this was not done).

Perhaps explain the h_index in the text, as some younger researchers may not be familiar with this metric.

Regarding the results, the authors did not consider the previous recommendations. That is, the results need to be developed in the clusters. Clusters need to be explained with the literature.

Previously, it was recommended to make a table with the analysis of future lines of investigation. That is, to synthesize future lines of investigation. This is fundamental in this type of study. You can also do this analysis by cluster.

 

In order to make the paper more robust, they could create a framework taking into account the results of the study.

 

The conclusions are weak and do not answer the 6 research questions formulated in the introduction.

The theoretical and practical implications need to be reviewed and developed (this is fundamental in the papers).

What does study add to knowledge? What they write does not answer this. In other words, how original is the study?

See previous review comments in conclusion.

English needs to be proofread, preferably by a native speaker.

In the review, I ask the authors to write a rebuttal letter and include the answers to all recommendations. Also mark the revisions made in a different color.

English needs to be proofread, preferably by a native speaker.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper has improved in quality with revisions.

Moderate editing of English language required

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I start by thanking you for your research, on such an interesting topic: Digital Leadership.

In order to dully consider your paper, I understand that there are crucial changes to be made, as follows:

1- Title must be revised, simplified. Reading your title I cannot understand what will you be dealing with in your research. I propose to simplify it.

2- Literature review is insuficient to support whatever you intend to research. There are bot more and updtaed literature on the topic.

3- Please reconsider the use of certain terms like "digitizing", and frmae them in literature. Digitizing is possibly the first, and more simple stage of digital transformation. To digitize something you need an administrative or bureauctratic leader, not a real digital leader. I advise you to search in literature the concrete terms to use.

4- In my opinion, using 8 research questions is justified only in case researchers are in a very first stage of any research. Certainly, if researchers are in an advanced stage of a research, research questions are more focused, and research will be more narrowed. Please reconsider to reduce and to focus your research. And please consider that some of the supposed research questions are, in fact, specific goals fo the research (not questions);

5- Methodology seems ok but I cannot agree with the research terms used that will lack some important research on the subject. For instance, instead of using only "Digital Leadership", why not use also "Leadership and Digital Transformation". If you follow this line, you will definitely pick some other important papers that will reinforce the support of your research. E.g. "Leadership characteristics and Digital Transformation", Porfirio et al, (2021), Journal of Business Research, whose Total Citations are currently about 95 (see Google Citations).

6- Also consider to revise your paper's contributions. Instead of simply presenting statistics, try to devise the real contributions for knowledge arising from the papers considered in your research.

I believe that your idea has a goos potential, but a lot of work must be done in order to consider this research ok for approval to be published in Sustainability.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Please take into consideration the following issues:

1. The TITLE doesn't seem appropriate. The words "Associated Topics for Future Research" seem to be useless.

2.  Is it necessary to repeat the title (lines 20-21) in the ABSTRACT? It is not appropriate to use acronyms (line 24) in the ABSTRACT.

3. The KEYWORDS should be changed. "Digital leadership" and "industry sectors" should be added.

4. The INTRODUCTION should be restructured to better emphasize the context of the paper and the relevance of the subject. 

5. LIMITATIONS and CONCLUSIONS should be expanded. Is this study representative? Why?

6. The use of the English language should be improved- e.g., "How focused is Digital Leadership during the process of digitizing organizations." (line 18)- Is it a question or a statement?; "To know the approach, this study had the purpose of analyzing the literature in Scopus on Digital Leadership during 2018-2022 to know the main information on..." (lines 18-20); "This leader is the person who gathers the knowledge together with the skills of the original leadership..." (lines 35-38)- What does it mean?; "...more research and discussion on this topic is still required,..." (lines 79-80)- "Are" instead of "is".

The paper is rather descriptive.

All in all, the quality of the paper is relatively low. It doesn't comply with the requirements of a scientific paper.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, thank you for the opportunity to revise this interesting paper. I appreciated your choice to conceptualize  digital leadership during the process of digitizing organizations. At the same time, I found very interesting insights about emerging topic in digital leadership in organizations, especially in the countries that make up the great geographical scientific gap identified in this bibliometric study. However, the article requires language editing.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I think you answer the issues previously formulated.