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Article
Peer-Review Record

Automated Sustainability Assessment System for Small and Medium Enterprises Reporting

Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5687; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145687
by Edward Kassem * and Oldrich Trenz
Reviewer 1: Anonymous
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5687; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145687
Submission received: 29 June 2020 / Revised: 8 July 2020 / Accepted: 13 July 2020 / Published: 15 July 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue CSR and Business Ethics for Sustainable Development)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very well organized paper and is highly commendable, but the following points could be improved
First of all, it would have been nice to have a schematic illustration to show the relationship between phases 1 to 3. I didn't intuitively understand that relationship from figure 1.
Also, the case of a Czech brewery was used in this study, and I wondered why it was appropriate for the subject of this study. You should strongly explain the reasons for the It would also be good to mention the criteria for these firms to be small and medium-sized.
Furthermore, the "hypothesis" derived in this study should rather be called a "proposition" because it cannot be considered to have been proven based on the explanation provided. The "hypothesis" derived in this study should rather be called a "proposition" because it is difficult to say that it has been proven with the explanation presented. Therefore, two important "propositions" have been derived and various considerations have been made to prove them. If you think about it that way, it makes sense.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

A multi-criteria model which involves four main pillars of sustainability assessment 21 (economic, environmental, social and governance) is proposed in this study. The idea is good; however, some problems need to be addressed.

  1. It gives different enterprises the ability to verify and compare their efficiency and sustainability with other companies within the same sector in almost automated manner. However, the main idea for SR is to conduct self-improvement.
  2. Table 1 shows standards and frameworks for corporate sustainability assessment. How can you combine these several assessment to be economic, environmental, social and governance?
  3. In an enterprise, there is no systems such as EE or SVA? How did the authors conduct the automated sustainability assessment.
  4. Table 2 shows Sustainability assessment KPIs of Czech breweries. Source: authors. Where does this data come from?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is well written and addresses very important issues for sustainability assessment of business and provides advanced tool for automated, comprehensive, and simplified system for sustainability assessment of SMEs.

I would like to address the following questions: there are many tools for sustainability assessment of companies, please add Discussion section and address the missing critical discussion of limits and strengths of proposed tool for sustainability assessment in comparison with other techniques available.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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