Benefits of Adopting Innovation and Sustainability Practices in Project Management within the SME Context
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. In general, being a Systematic Literature Review, the manuscript is well structured and contains interesting contributions. However, some changes are needed:
- In the abstract, the contribution of the study in terms of practical, political and theoretical implications must be reinforced. What is the gap that this study aims to address?
- The intro is weak. The context of the study, the practical, political and theoretical contributions must be reinforced. Furthermore, this statement is too vague and does not encourage the reader: “Through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and critical assessment of available knowledge, the study identified innovation and sustainability practices and the benefits perceived by those who have used them.” (lines 54 to 56).
- Methods: a) in the description of the methods, the use of the Web of science and scopus databases must be justified; b) how were the keywords selected? b) 46 articles is a reduced sample and this was due to the fact that Step 2 reduced the sample a lot. I suggest using "project management" ("innovat*" OR "sustainab*") in the extraction AOR ("sustainab* practices" OR "sustainab* benefit*" OR "innovat* practices" OR "innovat* benefit*"
- The discussion of the study is very incipient, not making a connection to the articles included in the SLR.
- An autonomous section with practical, political and theoretical implications should be included. These are the output of the study.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The literature review you have conducted is well-grounded. It utilises an array of sources and provides a balanced review of the subject matter.
Innovation practices need to be outlined with regard to the area of the project that they affect. Though you have used some useful literature, there is a need to clarify what specific innovations impact projects the most and why. Refer to the literature and your own findings and contrast these if necessary. The innovation practices by category (table 2) are useful and make sense, but, again it would be good to link these to various levels of project (portfolio, program project). Also, try to give some context to the types of SMEs that are the most impacted by PM approaches.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this article.
The topic of the article is appropriate for the scenario and related to this investigation.
The data analysis does not back up the issue. The article looks like a philosophical approach that analyses everything and in the end, says nothing or rise more questions than in the first phase. From an economic perspective, this is not acceptable.
Although the purpose is evident, the author must ensure that readers understand how their study will impact SMEs' future sustainability. Let's make a scenario: If an SME is interested in sustainable practices to improve project management, what practices should choose to reach what type of benefits?
They should be more comprehensive when talking about innovation practices. Talking about 166 innovation practices without analyzing their impact on SMEs' sustainability/ profitability is not a research, but a listing of them. Maybe is better to focus on the 13 categories of innovation practices and analyze the economic impact.
The authors should investigate the main factors/practices with the higher impact that influence SMEs' evolutionary growth. What should be improved? Is there any conceptual model that can be developed? Are there any relations/ influences between factors?
In my opinion, there are paragraphs that might be eliminated because it is not necessary to give a definition of SLR (lines 68-71) or other general info (line 60-61).
The authors affirm: The innovation practices, sustainable practices, and benefits sections present the main information and critical analysis of these themes identified in the literature, as well as the main gaps identified. Finally, the discussion and conclusions section provides a synthesis of the main inferences and opportunities for future work. In my opinion, they didn't reach this goal, thus the discussion section is too general.
In most cases, references or facts are utilized to support the conclusions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for sending me the article to review.
I suggest this article to be enriched with clear problems in the introduction section, to describe the importance of conducting the literature review. So, the discussion section can be developed in line with it. An article may be good to give more explanation about SMEs and their problems.
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/10/7/162
Good luck!
Overal;, editing is needed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors made all suggestions. Thanks.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors
I really appreciate the effort to answer my questions and improve the article.
I still consider that you miss my point. A research, based on a survey or economic indicators, would be very interesting and I encourage you to start a research protocol in this regard. An example based on a few indicators might be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8290 .
Anyway, my concern this time was designing a model (http://www.ijmp.jor.br/index.php/ijmp/article/view/878/1050) to be implemented in practical approaches.
Please be so kind and try to organize all the variables in a model. From my experience, SMEs are not interested in theoretical solutions, they don't even take the time to read them. They are searching for practical approaches.
The Conclusion should contain 1-2 paragraphs - the essence of the entire article. The rest of the text might be moved up to Discussions that have to be based on many citations. Please do not delete it. I wasn't very clear, probably.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
It is important to do proofreading in your article so that it is of high quality.
Extensive editing of English is needed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the improvements.
As you already observed I prefer more practical articles.
For a literature review, it is interesting.
