Why Corporate Sustainability Is Not Yet Measured
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to read this article!
The introduction should be streamlined. The article is quite long and I consider that focusing the introduction would increase its readability. A recommended structure of the introduction would be:
(1) Say what your research question is – your main one, not a series of questions.
(2) Say why (a) this is important and (b) why this is of interest to the readers of this journal. (Please ensure what you say in (b) is relevant to readers anywhere in the world.)
(3) Say how your study answers your research question.
(4) Describe very briefly the contributions of the paper.
The article is not classified as a review, but ”It addresses the question by investigating the literature of the past 12 years.” The MDPI journals recommend PRISMA methodology for this type of studies and I consider that the authors should use it, in order to improve the quality of the paper. Using PRISMA would require a major revision of the methodology and results.
The literature is very well balanced, with new sources and also relevant, older references. I would like to recommend the authors to read the article:
How do we measure corporate environmental performance? A critical review, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.06.014
Minor comments: there are some spelling mistakes (e.g. in the abstract ”on the sustainability extent of a corporate because”).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, Thank you for sharing your valuable feedback which made our paper stronger. Please see edits in the attached document.
Best regards
Mariapia
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The title is appropriate and it is consistent with the topics discussed in the paper.
The abstract describes the purpose, methodology and main results of the research.
The methodology is well described.
References are referenced with the text.
The paper presents an introductory paragraph, materials and methods, results and discussion and conclusions.
The aim of the paper is clear, and the research questions specified.
The conclusions are consistent.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for reading the paper and for your kind feedback, which is highly appreciated. We have performed some minor variations to the paper to account for the comments received from the other reviewers with no relevant impact that could change your assessment.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Your paper starts with an interesting research objective, but your contribution lacks scientific rigour and value. The structure of the paper does not respond to academic standards. The common structure of a scientific paper should be:
- - Introduction: that should clearly highlight the importance of the topic analysed, identify a research gap in previous literature, clearly state the research objectives (that must be accomplished through an scientific research method and use clear variables and data), and anticipate the methods employed and main results found. The introduction is closed with a final paragraph explaining how the rest of the paper is organized. Your paper does not clearly present any of these issues.
- Literature review: this section must review general previous literature dealing with the same topic or objectives of the paper, and more specific literature that helps to define specific hypotheses to be tested or define relevant variables for the study. Updated and recent references should be included, but also references to seminal works. Your literature review (included in the introduction) is not clear whether it is and antecedent or a result of your study. In fact, one of the categories of studies resulting from your literature review is "4. Articles where the focus is to provide a ‘literature review’ of one or all or a selection of the three subjects mentioned above [10 articles], which have been discussed in the introduction".
- Method: a valid scientific research method should be proposed and clearly specified, explaining the variables, the sources of data, the context of the study, the mathematical model (formalizing equations…), etc. You conduct a literature review. Some steps and procedures are explained, but it is rather difficult to see how you filtered more than 19.000 results to end with 75, and why only 28 are really related to your research topic, that is measuring corporate sustainability. You should, for example, clearly specify the search string used in Scopus, WoS and Google Scholar, and probably refine it to obtain a more fine-grained initial selection of journal articles, conference contributions, or books. It is not clear if you consider measurment proposals of papers that suggest their own CSR or corporate sustainability scale to relate it with other variables such as financial performance, competitive success. There are relevant papers under this approach that are not cited in your study (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.02.051, https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-09-2017-0175). There are also relevant review studies that are not mentioned in your paper (e.g.,https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9780-6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2017.1313122 , https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1630, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2009.00274.x).
- Results: results should be presented in a clear and direct fashion. Your tables are not really relevant, and sometimes they look reiterative (e.g., Tables 3 and 6)
- Discussion: results should be discussed in relation to previous literature, explaining how the hypotheses or objectives of the study have been supported or not.
- Conclusions: highlighting the main contribution and the implications (for policymakers, researchers, practitioners), limitations, and future research lines. There are no relevant contributions in your study. You are not really offering an answer to "Why Corporate Sustainability is not yet measured". Your consideration of Goertz principles to explore the issue is really interesting, but how your perform your analysis lacks scientific relevance. Other interesting study also adopting Goertz framework is https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12514.
- An extensive English copyediting is needed.
Author Response
Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate you taking the time for reading it and for sharing your insights. We fear there is a disconnect between the way you read our paper and the content we have actually created. This is perhaps the case because you hail from engineering and/or sciences and believe that in all other mathematical work your suggested approach should be applied. We beg to differ: there are other legitimate research approaches and we chose one of them. Please see attached for detailed answers to the points raised
Best regards
Mariapia
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Authors! This article discusses the term 'Corporate Sustainability (CS)'. Generally specking, corporate sustainability is the practice of using resources in a way that is both profitable and socially responsible. It involves considering environmental, social, and economic factors when making business decisions. It is becoming increasingly critical as companies strive to reduce their environmental impact and build trust with their stakeholders.
This study has a very interesting concept, but I have some feedback that may be helpful in developing it.
1- Thedescription of CS is not well explained in the introduction. I would appreciate if you could provide me with an explanation of what is different between CS and supportiveliterature.
2- In the introduction section, although the research problem is well described, the gap in literature mentioned in Line 79 is not addressed in a convincing manner. Additionally, the importance of the research and its potential impact are not fully discussed. Building on that, the research objectives are not clearly stated.
3- When you say "This paper explores the reasons why a cohesive and comparable measure of CS doesn't exist yet," is the challenge that it doesn't exist, isn't measured, or isn't implemented? Earlier in the introduction, this study argued that this challenge had been addressed in practice. In the method section, you mentioned that you initiated the current measurement. Here, I got confused.
4 - The methods that are used for data mining are well-written.It has been described in detail how the methods were used. Furthermore, the results of data mining have been discussed, including any limitations or assumptions. However, keywords for searching (word strings) should specify what was 'OR' and what was 'AND'. Which software was used to analyze the yield results of sources?In the methods section, Table 4 should be included.There is no clarity as to whether this is a result of a search strategy or results collected from previous studies.
5- The content analysis was mentioned in the results section, but not described in the methods section. I would much approcite check some of the references that addap the content analysis and PRISMA protocol to conduct bibloteric studies.
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11100471
https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065135
https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X177239
6- The discussion section should like your results to previous studies that dicuss the challanges of sustainability. Discussing the reserch questions in compersion to the results is also missing. This comparison helps to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the current study, as well as the implications for the field of sustainability. It also gives the reader an opportunity to evaluate the validity of the research questions and the results.
There is a minor issue with the readability of the text. This work has been carried out in many places for some time. The abbreviation of corporate sustainability should be mentioned in full the first time mentioned in the text. Please revise your abstract and the first mention of this term in the introduction section.
The findings and discussion section should stand alone, not as a subsection. So, the results section should be numbered section #3. In another word, section 2.3 Findings and Discussion should be named 3 Results and Discussion.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments which are highly appreciated. We have read your comments attentively and provide feedback and changes which are detailed in the attached document.
Best regards
Mariapia
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
My comments were addressed or the authors' point of view was explained.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for your detailed answers to the comments of my first review report. These have not been satisfactory for me. I recommend rejection of your paper beacuse I consider that it has low scientific relevance and you have no willingness to consider my point of view.
Best regards.
Reviewer 4 Report
As a result of reviewing the authors' responses and the revised version, I am confident that this manuscript has been developed and can be recommended for publication.
