Director Opinion on Community Competence: Evidence from Management Organizations of the Rural Community Support Project in South Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Some additional information is required, otherwise the abstract won't be sufficiently meaningful to many readers. What the "Rural Community Support Project" and the related "management organizations" and "project’s facilities and programs" are, is not known to a reader who does not know the specific situation in Korea. Similarly, how are "Rural Experience Recreational Village councils" related to that?

To "determine whether a rural village has the capacity to carry out projects" seems to be yet another story; quite different from what was mentioned earlier ("competence diagnostic results can assist in building these management organizations’ competences").

Shouldn't it always be "South Korea"?

"Since the 1970s, investment in Korea has focused nationally on cities in the process of rapid growth." Maybe this is too strong as a statement. See for example: http://www.oecd.org/dev/rural-development-policy-review.htm as well as the references in Section 3.1.

It is not correct that "the competence diagnostic indices and tools used in previous studies were developed for individuals". A more thorough review of existing diagnostic indices and tools related to communities (see for example the tools developed for the EU LEADER programme plus some of the references in Section 2 and Table 1) and organisations (see for example the related articles in Harvard Business Review) is needed.

"… details of this study" – Shouldn't reference be made to this article?

It is not made sufficiently clear in the article how for example Q17 and Q20 differ. The same applies to some other questions.

Table 4 is not sufficiently informative for the reader as only the question numbers are given. Consider at least an Annex with all questions.

Sentences like "verifying the ability of management organizations to operate and manage the project and forming competence for independence through consensus-forming among rural residents and organization members" need a thorough edit in order to improve readability.

Some of the listings in flow text in Section 8. Conclusions should be transformed into bullet points to improve readability.

I suggest to also reconsider the title as currently it raises more questions than providing an easily understandable clue on the content of the article.

Author Response

The 'Rural Experience Recreation Village Council' plays the biggest role in the 'Rural Community Support Project' and performs various projects. The 'Rural Experience Recreational Village Councils' were also the most financially supported and operated reliably compared to other businesses.

Depending on the point of view, "Since the 1970s, investment in Korea has focused on cities in the process of rapid growth" may be felt strongly, but many Korean researchers use this expression.

Reviewer 2 Report

Rural communities often reveal poor skills and capacity in designing, starting and carrying on their rural development projects. 

The paper correctly addresses that issue.

The paper has the correct theoretical and methodological framework. 

I only suggest adding some political economics advice in Section 8 (Conclusion). What policies can increase the ability of rural communities to promote their own bottom-up development? 

Author Response

Thank you for your good reply.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of the submitted manuscript is interesting. The research will be useful for researchers and policy makers. It should be highlighted in the manuscript. Please enhance the review of related literature by highlighting the gaps in literature and emphasizing the novel aspects of your work. The literature is very superficial. More thorough literature analysis is needed in this manuscript. For example part:” Components of Community Competence”. The authors give there any few references. This part of the article should be enriched for more references to international publications.

I my opinion in title should be expert opinions not expert opinion because research included opinions of few directors. In title of article should also indicate that the article concerns on Korea. In its current form title of article suggests that opinions of experts from different countries are examined.

Please  indicate clearly the importance of this manuscript for the agriculture in Korea and the added value of this manuscript in this context. Please too indicate clearly the added value of the article in the abstract (not only in introduction).

The authors describing the research methodology refer to previous studies. Where will the reader find information on this topic? There is no reference to previous research in this article. The research methodology described in this way is incomprehensible. It should be described in detail and reference should be made to previous studies enabling the reader to reach for them.

In the article isn’t the discussion of the results. The results aren’t related to other studies. Expanding the discussion and referring to the results of other authors' studies is necessary in these manuscript. Therefore, please enrich the text with a discussion.

Author Response

As per your opinion, 'export' has been changed to 'directors'.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper address quite current and interesting topic related with urbanization and disparities between the urban and rural areas. The are few issues which are quite confusing and need to be changed:
1. The title and the abstract is not clear to someone who is not familiar with situation in South Korea - make it simplier and clearer to understand, add the main outputs
2. The paper doesn't follow the required structure and the discussion part is missing - change the structure according to the template with instructions for authors, add the discussion part
3. There are paragraphs in parts 1, 2, and 3 where the citations are missing - support your statements by resources or your findings.
4. The paper has an local character there is needed to put it into global context, to generalize the outputs and express their contribution for the discussion - updated introduction and added discussion may help.
5. Table 1 is redundant
6. The methodology and research questions are very unclear to someone who doesn't know the Korean situation in detail - try to reformulate the research questions (keep it simple) and better explain the whole methodology (eg. table 3 a 4 use Q1, Q2.. etc, but we don't know what were the questions). The questionairres and the structure of interviews could be a part of appendix. Table 5 should be rather a part of discussion and the information there should be explained.
7. There should be also mentioned what is the importance of your findings (contribution or novelty) and what are the limits in the study (partly it is done in the conlusion)

Revised introduction and literature review could help to put your research into the wider context, then the better explained aim and methodology can contribute to better understanding of the research impact (discussion part).

Author Response

I have made some corrections to your point and received an MDPI English editing.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Some issues that were raised in the previous review and considered significant have not been addressed.

Author Response

Some of the contents have been modified. Thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

All my comments have been taken into account. 

Author Response

Thank you.

Reviewer 4 Report

There was made a proof reading and change of the title, which I appreciate, as the paper seems to be little bit more understandable. Unfortunately, there weren't made the major changes as it was required (no changes in cited authors to ensure that paper is more coherent). 

Author Response

Thank you.