How to Leverage Digital Sustainability Orientation to Promote Environmentally Sustainable Practices of Manufacturing Enterprises in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
I very much appreciate your hard work focusing on Digital Sustainability Orientation to Promote Environmentally Sustainable Practices. I do believe the work is impactful. However, there is more room for improvement in the quality of the paper. Please check below:
· I think the Literature review is highly descriptive and does not provide a critical perspective. I would recommend the authors review similar works. There is a lack of an excellent
understanding of the literature and the ability to build strong arguments supported by critical analysis by the authors. Despite scholars' attempts to offer theoretical insights, the existing literature lacks clarity on conceptual aspects.
· I suggest the authors critically review recent works published in reputable outlets and pay
careful attention to the abstract that needs significant polishing and typos. I believe there are
several issues that need to be addressed.
I summarise it as:
· How have the authors arrived at their research gaps?
· How do the research questions help address the research gaps?
· The Methodology chapter needs to be revised. The methods or approaches used and the reasons for their selection should be clarified. Additionally, the rationale behind using the mentioned tools and techniques to analyse the data needs to be explained.
· Please add the Discussion Chapter. The Discussion chapter should be derived from the findings and justified by comparing with prior studies. It should include both practical and theoretical implications and not be written superficially. Please revise.
Best regards,
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe quality of English Language is reasonable.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your valuable comments. Your comments have provided very important help in improving the rigor and completeness of the article. After our discussion, we have revised your comments one by one, and marked the revised parts in red. In addition, we have prepared a revision explanation to explain the revision ideas and revision goals. Thank you again for your careful guidance, best wishes!
The specific modifications and explanations are as follows:
Comments 1: How have the authors arrived at their research gaps?
Response 1: According to your suggestion, this paper reorganized the introduction and literature review, strengthened the explanation of existing research progress and research gaps, supplemented necessary literature, and conducted in-depth reviews to highlight the necessity of this study. The specific changes are shown in red font (line). Our revision ideas are as follows：
First, in the first paragraph of the introduction, we first proposed the importance of environmental sustainability to corporate development, and pointed out a common problem in the current environmental sustainability practices of enterprises, that is, "some enterprises claim to carry out environmental sustainability practices, but have been unable to implement them, and even have green behavior." The possible reason for this phenomenon is the lack of reasonable strategic orientation and resource basis. This paper will focus on clarifying how enterprises can continuously promote environmental sustainability practices.
Next, in the second paragraph of the introduction, we reviewed the existing research progress on environmental sustainability practices, and believed that most previous studies followed a simple "stimulus-result" model to examine the environmental sustainability practices of enterprises, such as institutional pressure. These studies ignored the initiative of enterprises and could not really solve the problem of implementing environmental sustainability practices. Other studies have explored how organizational strategic orientation, resources and capabilities affect the environmental strategy of enterprises from the resource-based view, but have not yet revealed what mechanism enables the continuity of corporate environmental sustainability practices. To this end, we continue to discuss the impact of digitalization on enterprises and introduce the concept of digital sustainability, believing that digital sustainability can drive corporate environmental sustainability practices and keep the activity continuous. However, digital sustainability research is currently in the stage of theoretical construction, and the relevant operational quantitative methods have not yet been determined. There is also a lack of attention to the mechanism research on how digital sustainability can be further transformed into environmental sustainability. Therefore, another research gap that this article focuses on is how to effectively play the dual advantages of digital technology empowerment and sustainable value proposition leadership to promote digital environmental sustainability practices? What factors can help companies explain how digital sustainability is transformed into environmental sustainability practices.
Secondly, in the third paragraph, we pointed out that the green capability perspective provides a tool for refining the relationship between digital sustainability and environmental sustainability practices, and proposed the concept of digital green capability, which is what previous studies have ignored. We believe that matching digital sustainability, digital green capability may be an important component dimension for enterprises to achieve environmental sustainability practices. In addition, we also consider the boundary role of environmental scanning in the impact of digital sustainability on environmental sustainability practices. This is because under the guidance of digital sustainability, enterprises face the impact of two external environmental changes. One is the impact of digital technology turbulence (Bendig et al, 2023), that is, digital technology is constantly changing, and enterprises need to master the application of new technologies and their twin technologies. As a resource base, digital orientation can only play the most effective role in driving strategy if it is constantly matched with the environment. Second, policies and markets related to sustainable development are constantly changing, such as the carbon footprint access regulations for multinational companies issued by European and American countries, and the Chinese government's subsidy policy for new energy. The information asymmetry created by changes in the institutional environment and market environment provides entrepreneurial opportunities for the implementation of corporate sustainable strategies. Therefore, whether digital sustainable orientation can have an impact on organizational change requires companies to maintain the practice of environmental scanning, agilely reflect market changes, and accelerate the renewal and reconstruction of capabilities. Information system theory and dynamic capability theory also emphasize the important impact of external information matching on organizational behavior. Therefore, this paper incorporates environmental scanning, an active information search behavior, into the analysis of the mechanism of digital sustainable orientation on digital green innovation performance.
Again, in the last paragraph of the introduction, we once again elaborated on the core research question to be solved: "How does digital sustainability affect corporate environmental sustainability practices? What kind of strategic orientation and organizational capabilities are corporate environmental sustainability practices based on? How can companies maintain an adaptive and agile environmental sustainable development practice mechanism in a dynamic environment with iterative digital technologies and diverse institutional regulations?" This is also a topic that has not been solved in existing research, and the research content of this study is elaborated.
Finally, in the literature review section on digital sustainability orientation, we introduced the research progress of digital sustainability and the process of proposing the digital sustainability orientation, and emphasized the shortcomings in the research on the operational definition of digital sustainability.
Comments 2: How do the research questions help address the research gaps?
Response 2: In the review, this study summarizes the research gaps into the following three points.
(1) Most previous studies examined the environmental sustainability practices of enterprises from the perspective of institutional environment factors, manager cognitive factors or organizational resource-based view, including green innovation, sustainable entrepreneurship, environmental management practices, etc. However, few studies have focused on how entrepreneurs should promote environmental sustainability practices in the context of digital transformation;
(2) How to understand digital sustainability;
(3) What is the relationship between digital sustainability orientation and environmental sustainability practices.
To this end, we first explained in the introduction that although corporate environmental sustainability practices are crucial to enterprises, there is still a dilemma that some enterprises make environmental sustainability commitments but cannot achieve them. Therefore, based on the reality that corporate environmental sustainability practices cannot be achieved and the theoretical gap in environmental sustainability practices in the context of digitalization, we determined the first research question to be solved in this paper: how to define digital sustainability?
We paid attention to the emerging phenomenon of digital sustainability and chose to define digital sustainability from the perspective of strategic orientation. According to the research of Gregori and Holzmann (2020), it is regarded as a dual strategic orientation and measured by the interaction of digital orientation and sustainable commitment orientation. This is because George and Schillebeeckx (2022) found that digitalization and sustainability can promote each other, which is also the essential feature of digital sustainability.
Next, following the existing research progress on digitalization and environmental sustainability, we further connect digital sustainability with corporate environmental sustainability, leading to the second question we want to solve, namely (2) how digital sustainability orientation drives corporate environmental sustainability practices. We choose to analyze from the perspective of green capabilities because strategic orientation, as a resource basis (Cadogan, 2012) and cultural atmosphere (Hakala, 2011), can promote the improvement of green capabilities (Rehman et al., 2022). Based on the perspective of digital transformation, we construct a theoretical model mediated by digital green capabilities to test the mechanism of digital sustainability orientation on corporate environmental sustainability. Finally, considering the dynamics of digitalization and sustainable development, we incorporate environmental scanning into it, trying to more completely reveal the impact of digital sustainability orientation on environmental sustainability practices, that is, to lead to the third question of this article (3) whether there are boundary conditions that affect the mechanism of digital sustainability orientation.
According to your suggestions, we have strengthened the explanation of research questions and research gaps in the introduction and review, and supplemented relevant literature. For details, follow (lines 121-137、149-167 ).
Comments 3: The Methodology chapter needs to be revised. The methods or approaches used and the reasons for their selection should be clarified. Additionally, the rationale behind using the mentioned tools and techniques to analyse the data needs to be explained.
Response 3: The questionnaire survey method is a frequently used method in the field of strategic management and sustainable research. This is because some variables can only be measured more completely through first-hand data obtained through questionnaires, avoiding the limitations of variable definition using secondary data. For example, for green innovation, if secondary data is used, it is mostly measured by the number of green patents, but the content of green innovation is far more than that.
Similarly, the digital orientation, sustainable commitment orientation, digital green capabilities, etc. that this study focuses on are all classic organizational phenomena. There are also similar literatures to our research:
- Ardito L, Raby S, Albino V, et al. The duality of digital and environmental orientations in the context of SMEs: Implications for innovation performance[J]. Journal of Business Research, 2021, 123: 44-56.
- Nguyen N M, Hoai T T, Vo H V, et al. Digital approach toward environmental sustainability in supply chains: Evidence from Vietnamese firms[J]. Sustainable Development, 2023, 31(5): 3303-3317.
- Rehman S U, Bresciani S, Yahiaoui D, et al. Environmental sustainability orientation and corporate social responsibility influence on environmental performance of small and medium enterprises: The mediating effect of green capability[J]. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2022, 29(6): 1954-1967.
These studies did not specifically explain the reasons for using the questionnaire survey method, but according to your suggestions, we have moderately explained why the questionnaire survey method was used in the research method section, and the modifications are as follows（Lines 375-385）.
Comments 4: Please add the Discussion Chapter. The Discussion chapter should be derived from the findings and justified by comparing with prior studies. It should include both practical and theoretical implications and not be written superficially. Please revise.
Response 4: Thanks very much for your positive comments and hard work. We strongly agree with your comments concerning this issue. To this end, we have reorganized the research conclusions and theoretical contributions, added in-depth discussions of the conclusions, and tried to dialogue with existing research to highlight the research value of this article. The specific changes are as follows Lines -552-658。
- Cadogan J W. International marketing, strategic orientations and business success: Reflections
on the path ahead[J]. International Marketing Review, 2012, 29(4): 340-348.
[3]Hakala H. Strategic orientations in management literature: Three approaches to understanding the interaction between market, technology, entrepreneurial and learning orientations[J]. International Journal of Management Reviews, 2011, 13(2): 199-217.
[4]Rehman S U, Bresciani S, Yahiaoui D, et al. Environmental sustainability orientation and corporate social responsibility influence on environmental performance of small and medium enterprises: The mediating effect of green capability[J]. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2022, 29(6): 1954-1967.
[5]George G, Schillebeeckx S J D. Digital transformation, sustainability, and purpose in the multinational enterprise[J]. Journal of World Business, 2022, 57(3): 101326.
[6]Gregori P, Holzmann P. Digital sustainable entrepreneurship: A business model perspective on embedding digital technologies for social and environmental value creation[J]. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2020, 272: 122817.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsOverall, this study aims to explore how to promote the environmental sustainability practices of high-quality enterprises in the digital age, starting from the perspective of research objectives. This goal is of practical significance because the digital age presents new challenges and opportunities for both businesses and environmental sustainability.
In terms of research methodology, this study proposes the concept of Digital Sustainable Orientation (DSO) and introduces Digital Green Capability (DGC) as a mediating variable. It constructs a model of the driving mechanism for enterprise environmental sustainability practices and considers the moderating effect of environmental scanning. The study empirically tests the model using data from 348 manufacturing enterprises in China. This indicates that the study adopts a relatively comprehensive theoretical framework and various data analysis methods, lending it a certain degree of credibility.
Regarding the research findings, the empirical tests of this study suggest that DSO enhances ESP (Environmental Sustainability Practices); DGC plays an important moderating role between DSO and ESP, and ES (Environmental Scanning) as a moderating variable further regulates the mediating role of DGC between DSO and ESP. It is evident that the research outcomes are significant for deepening the understanding and practice of environmental sustainability practices in the digital age for enterprises.
In terms of research value, the conclusions of this study broaden the application scope of strategic orientation theory in research on digital sustainable development, which holds theoretical and practical significance for exploring the formation of digital sustainable development and the driving mechanism of ESP. Thus, this study has certain guiding value for both business practices and academic research.
In summary, this study demonstrates a certain degree of scientific rigor and practical significance, but attention should also be paid to the rigor of research methods and the robustness of results.
Author Response
Thank you for your affirmation of this study. According to your suggestion that the robustness can be strengthened, we tested each hypothesis using two methods and supplemented the robustness test of the moderated mediation effect by adding digital orientation and sustainable commitment orientation to measure the overall level of digital sustainability orientation, see (Lines -544-551 ).
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper provides a value contribution to development of theory in digital business administration with respect to sustainability aspects.
It starts from rather abstract concepts of strategic orientation theory and resource based views. The usefulness of these theories is debatable, as they treat perceptions within management as real things despite of their abstract character. In particular, in the context of digital transformation it is unclear, how the theory maps to (static and comparably more concrete) business capabilities from enterprise architecture theory and other theories that explicitly deal with digital technologies within companies). However, they are scholarly established theories providing useful insights also for practitioners.
Given that one assumes their relevance, they way how the paper addresses digitalization is adequate, the empirical research is set up properly, and the results are convincing.
Figure 2 contains the main findings that are supported by the data analysis. Unfortunately, it tastes tautologicallly.as the definitions applied for the concepts are hidden. I recommend to add the more complex picture that contains them. and to discuss the dependency of these definitions. This should be possible with the data you have collected.
Some statements or arguments I did not understand, e.g. "The continuous cultivation of force is necessary ..." or why there is no non-return bias.
The introductory part might be meant as a motivation, ut it is neither state-of-the-art nor is it take up again later. I recommend to shorten it or omit it at all. It would be much better to target very explicitly the intended contribution to theory from the very beginning and to discuss the meaning and relevance for practitioners at the end. The paper is rather weak in that respect.
In particular, examples that illustrate the new parts of the theory would improve the paper significantly. However the examples should be really concrete, containing comparisons of management decisions that are costly in terms of opportunity costs.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
I am not very qualifies to judge on the quality of English, but some sentences are simply difficult to understand.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions on the paper. Your comments have provided very important help in improving the rigor and completeness of the article. According to your comments, we have made modifications and responses one by one, further strengthened the theoretical analysis process of this study, strengthened the rigor of the hypothesis, clarified the research purpose, and systematically proofread the article. Thank you again for your careful guidance, best wishes!
The specific modifications and explanations are as follows:
Comments 1: Figure 2 contains the main findings that are supported by the data analysis. Unfortunately, it tastes tautologicallly.as the definitions applied for the concepts are hidden. I recommend to add the more complex picture that contains them. and to discuss the dependency of these definitions. This should be possible with the data you have collected.
Response 1: Thank you for your suggestions on Figure 2. We have redesigned it to reflect the hypothesized relationship between the variables, which corresponds to the results of the empirical analysis and also reflects the research logic of this article, "strategic orientation-capability-practice".
Comments 2: Some statements or arguments I did not understand, e.g. "The continuous cultivation of force is necessary ..." or why there is no non-return bias.
Response 2: We are very sorry, this is due to our translation problem. For this reason, we proofread the translation again and submit the full text to the translation agency that cooperates with MDPI for language polishing to avoid any misunderstanding.
Comments 3: The introductory part might be meant as a motivation, ut it is neither state-of-the-art nor is it take up again later. I recommend to shorten it or omit it at all. It would be much better to target very explicitly the intended contribution to theory from the very beginning and to discuss the meaning and relevance for practitioners at the end. The paper is rather weak in that respect.
Response 3: According to your suggestion, this paper reorganized the introduction, strengthened the explanation of existing research progress and research gaps, supplemented necessary literature, and conducted in-depth discussions to highlight the necessity of this study. The specific changes are shown in red. Our revision ideas are as follows：
First, in the first paragraph of the introduction, we first proposed the importance of environmental sustainability to corporate development, and pointed out a common problem in the current environmental sustainability practices of enterprises, that is, "some enterprises claim to carry out environmental sustainability practices, but have been unable to implement them, and even have green behavior." The possible reason for this phenomenon is the lack of reasonable strategic orientation and resource basis. This paper will focus on clarifying how enterprises can continuously promote environmental sustainability practices.
Next, in the second paragraph of the introduction, we review the existing research progress on environmental sustainability practices and believe that most previous studies follow a simple "stimulus-result" model to examine the environmental sustainability practices of enterprises, such as institutional pressure. These studies ignore the initiative of enterprises and cannot truly solve the problem of implementing environmental sustainability. Other studies have explored how organizational strategic orientation, resources and capabilities affect the environmental strategy of enterprises from the resource-based view, but have not yet revealed what mechanism drives the continuity of corporate environmental sustainability practices. To this end, we continue to discuss the impact of digitalization on enterprises and introduce the concept of digital sustainability, believing that digital sustainability can drive corporate environmental sustainability practices. However, digital sustainability research is currently in the stage of theoretical construction, and the relevant operational quantitative methods have not yet been determined. There is also a lack of attention to the mechanism of how digital sustainability can be further transformed into environmental sustainability. Therefore, another research gap that this article focuses on is how to effectively play the dual advantages of digital technology empowerment and sustainable value proposition leadership to promote digital environmental sustainability practices? What factors can help companies explain how digital sustainability is transformed into environmental sustainability practices?
Secondly, in the third paragraph, we pointed out that the green capability perspective provides a tool for refining the relationship between digital sustainability and environmental sustainability practices, and proposed the concept of digital green capability, which is ignored by previous studies. We believe that matching digital sustainability, digital green capability may be an important component dimension for enterprises to achieve environmental sustainability practices. In addition, we also consider the boundary role of environmental scanning digital sustainability in affecting environmental sustainability practices. This is because under the digital sustainability orientation, enterprises face the impact of two external environmental changes. One is the impact of digital technology turbulence, that is, digital technology is constantly changing, and enterprises need to master the application of new technologies and their twin technologies. As a resource base, digital orientation can only play the most effective driving role of strategy if it is constantly matched with the environment. Second, policies and markets related to sustainable development are constantly changing, such as the carbon footprint access regulations for multinational companies issued by Europe and the United States, and the subsidy policies for new energy in the domestic market. The information asymmetry created by changes in the institutional environment and market environment provides entrepreneurial opportunities for the implementation of corporate sustainable strategies. Therefore, whether digital sustainable orientation can have an impact on organizational change requires companies to maintain the practice of environmental scanning, agilely reflect market changes, and accelerate the renewal and reconstruction of capabilities. Information system theory and dynamic capability theory also emphasize the important impact of external information matching on organizational behavior. Therefore, this paper incorporates environmental scanning, an active information search behavior, into the analysis of the mechanism of action of digital sustainable orientation on digital green innovation performance.
Finally, in the last paragraph of the introduction, we once again elaborate on the core research problem to be solved, which is also a topic that has not been solved in existing research, and elaborate on the research content of this study.
Comments 4: In particular, examples that illustrate the new parts of the theory would improve the paper significantly. However the examples should be really concrete, containing comparisons of management decisions that are costly in terms of opportunity costs.
Response 4: Once again, I feel that your valuable suggestions have made our article more valuable. According to your suggestions, we have supplemented the specific arguments of the theoretical part, cited necessary examples of the relationship between digitalization and sustainability, and considered two strategic-oriented comparisons of management decisions. Our modifications are as follows(Lines 149- 167):
The resource-based view shows the relationship between resources and corporate advantages. Digitalization, as a kind of resource input, requires the purchase of hardware equipment, software systems, network infrastructure, and the recruitment of digital maintenance personnel. Digitalization has high maintenance costs, opportunity costs, and sunk costs. Moreover, if it is improperly implemented or relies on digitalization without limit, it will have negative effects on the company's own development, its ecological environment, and stakeholders, ultimately weakening the company's industry competitiveness. Although the sustainable commitment orientation can drive the green innovation behavior of enterprises, the green innovation process of enterprises squeezes the company's original limited resources. For example, the environmental protection transformation of existing production materials, production equipment, and operation processes requires a large number of R&D funds and technology, which very easily falls into the "green trap"; this limits the profitability of enterprises and threatens their survival and development [34]. Some studies have also found that due to the lack of a reasonable sustainable business model, sustainable entrepreneurs have never been able to truly obtain a plan to implement sustainable practices [35]. In short, the implementation of digitalization orientation and sustainable commitment orientation has huge management costs.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
