Introduction of an Integrated System for Measuring the BSC and DEA-Based Performance of Social Systems Using Uncontrollable Factors: A Case Study of Shahriar Municipalities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is interesting and innovative. But the following corrections are necessary to improve the article.

1-      The references are very old, and it is better to use newer references.

2-      Many articles have been written in the last few years, which should be included in the references. Some of them are:

·       Najafi, E., & Aryanezhad, M. (2011). A BSC-DEA approach to measure the relative efficiency of service industry: A case study of banking sector. International Journal of Industrial Engineering Computations, 2(2), 273-282.

·       Antonella Basso, Francesco Casarin, Stefania Funari  (2018). How well is the museum performing? A joint use of DEA and BSC to measure the performance of museums Omega, Volume 81, December 2018, Pages 67-84.

·       Chinho Lin, Shu-Fang Ting, Leslie Lee, Sheng-Tun Lin. (2021). Firm capability assessment via the BSC and DEA. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 2 March,.

3-      In Figure 3, two areas of social responsibility and customer are seen with equal weight and should be explained

4-      The deduction form of the F_OK relationship must be modified

5-      Are the importance of the five areas of the balanced scorecard (Table 5) do they change by changing the weights of table number 4? Please explain

6-      In table number 9, Andisheh municipality is inefficient in the field of growth and learning, but it is efficient in the other four areas. Is the efficiency of the other four units confirmed?

7-      The conclusion should be strengthened, and some key conclusions should be given in it.

Author Response

hi dear

thanks to reviewer. the requsted corrections were made.please attach file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1- It is better to state the study's contribution in the abstract section clearly.
2- Write the abstract in a single paragraph.
3- You have yet to use any references in the introduction section, which needs revision.
4- Checking the research background is inappropriate and outdated. Please consider more recent studies.
5- It is better to provide valid references for all the formulas.
6- It would have been better if you had referred to the research results in the conclusion section to support the proposed idea (of course, I believe that writing a conclusion in a short paragraph is sufficient, especially in the field of mathematics; In that case, I leave the decision to the authors whether this section should be extended further).
7- Please consider the highlights in the main file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

HI DEAR

thanks to reviewer.the requested corrections were made.please attach file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors

thank you for having the opportunity to review this paper. Although I am sympathetic with the theme and the overall aim of the paper, I am afraid to say that the paper bears some major drawbacks that make it not publishable as it stands, in details:

- the paper claims that BSC in the public sector and BSC in general is a novel meauserement system. I am afraid to say that there is instead a vast literature since the 1990s that the authors seem to neglect. 

- the BSC model is presented in its original structure without considering that Kaplan and Norton, and other scholars, proposed some adaptations. The original structure in fact does not consider some of the specificities of public sector entities and municipality in particular. To make an example, customer retention cannot be a KPI as citizens do not have alternatives as there is no market for many public services provided by municipalities. Besides, municipalities should care not only to service users(Customer) but also to general citizens even when they are not service users. The BSC model the paper adopts is not fit for municipality.

- I am also skeptical about the variables used for the four perspectives. For internal processes is considered the "Employees number" that has nothing to do with the efficiency and quality of internal processes. The indicators are not motivated.

- I am also concerned about the structure of the paper. The introduction is too long, it looks like a preliminary literature review, Table 1 should be placed in section 2 and section 2 expanded with more BSC literature from the public sector

- There is no discussion about the result and an analysis on how the paper contributes with respect to the extant literature.

- The conclusion is poorly developed as it does not make clear the contribution and the implications both for practice and for the literature

Author Response

hi dear

thanks to reviewer .the question asked have been answered  as much as possible

please attach file

hamed soleimani

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments have been considered by authors.  

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

thanks you for this revised version. I appreciated the efforts made. I still have some minor issues, in particular:

- the conclusions are very descriptive, you should make clear your contributions to the literature and to the practice. What municipality managers can learn from your study? how your study contribute to the general literature and the take aways for other scholars in other context?

- the conclusions should also highlight the limitations of the study

Author Response

hi dear

the requesdted items  were done.please see attachment .thanks a lot

Author Response File: Author Response.docx