Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

At first I was somewhat reluctant to read this research, mainly because I am from political science and the authors are not. However, the paper is presented in a way that makes the topic interesting and shows how good research can fascinate scholars from other disciplines. Excellent job!

Author Response

Thank you for reading the manuscript. We are pleased to have interested you. Best regards.

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the article corresponds to the knowledge that the authors hold of the studied subject they manage very well. The work is interesting because it deals with the awareness of a modality of cultural exchange currently fashionable in the FabLab in two countries far apart from each other.

The authors seem to equal in the FabLab under investigation sustainability with diversity and therefore also with the promotion of creativity.

Your interesting manuscript could be improved:

1)      I think by adding some information about innovation, as happens in “knowledge-creating” and “self-managed” organizations. For this purpose, I advise you to create a new paragraph grounded on relevant literature after line 75.

Especially one of the authors should be in degree to get infos about Prof. Sampsa Hyysalo and Prof. Eva Heiskanen. It's just a tip about the literature on the subject.

Then renumber your notes should not be of trouble.

The motivations for collaborations and the range of activities allowed in the FabLab are very varied because they exceed the capabilities of the same stakeholders (in the case, for example, of their technical know-how or their complementary skills in R&D). As organizations, FabLab is rightly reflected in the document as sometimes hybrid, sometimes exposed to unforeseen liability (such as the use of technical tools), sometimes producing structural inertia due to aversion to the risk.

Thus, the diversity of stakeholders and tasks challenges the role of managers, even though they have the ability to assist and involve people, also across generations. They also need to bridge differences in order to create a vibrant and active work community, as the networked feedback is anything but conventional.
The interviews and stories that the authors have collected from the selected FabLabs in Italy and Finland, then address this challenge particularly with what they call “multiple stakeholders’ collaboration management” (see line 186).

2)      To improve this assertion, I would add some annotations on the meaning of the expression “open organizations,” making use of Walter J. Powell and/or J.W. Fredrickson’s analysis, just as examples on the theme. Your text seems to benefit lot from the stress on cognitive biases, whether the internal environment (the management of the FabLab) and the external environment (the stakeholders) are crossing competences in the identification of success and failure of the co-creation (see your own paragraph: 4.2 Second challenge: becoming a lively community and a catalyst of individual development, especially lines 336 to 337).

To that end, I would add a new short paragraph somewhere between lines 223 and 266.

Then renumber your notes should not be of trouble.

It is only from a stylistic point of view that I would remove spaces in the text between the main paragraphs (example, between lines 88-9; 347-8; 488-9).

With regard to the excerpts, I would indent them on both sides of the page, but this advice must be agreed with the editorial board of the MDPI.

I would center Figure 1 and the caption below that seem to me aligned to the left.

I think that excerpts only smaller than the main paragraphs are somewhere forgotten in their importance of clarifying how the differences between backgrounds, objectives, decision-making processes and sustainable goals are conceptualized in the lively frameworks you have recorded and translated when needed in an engaging way.

3)      I would little rephrase lines 489 to 496 because the manuscript is well organized, and a foreseeable update is not of interest at the moment.

Kind Regards,

Author Response

 Dear reviewer, thank you for your useful and inspiring comments.

Here below a point-by-point reply to your suggestions.

1)  I think by adding some information about innovation, as happens in “knowledge-creating” and “self-managed” organizations. For this purpose, I advise you to create a new paragraph grounded on relevant literature after line 75. Especially one of the authors should be in degree to get infos about Prof. Sampsa Hyysalo and Prof. Eva Heiskanen. It's just a tip about the literature on the subject.

Then renumber your notes should not be of trouble.

Thank you for this feedback and the suggested references. We found proff. Hyysalo and Heiskanen's works quite interesting and we are aware we should go more deep inside this kind of studies.

In the short time we had, we have tried to refer to the concept of “user-inclusive innovation community” for describing FabLabs’ possible outcomes. This aspect relates also with the idea of multi-stakeholder engagement, which we are more familiar with (line 103).

2) To improve this assertion, I would add some annotations on the meaning of the expression “open organizations,” making use of Walter J. Powell and/or J.W. Fredrickson’s analysis, just as examples on the theme. Your text seems to benefit lot from the stress on cognitive biases, whether the internal environment (the management of the FabLab) and the external environment (the stakeholders) are crossing competences in the identification of success and failure of the co-creation (see your own paragraph: 4.2 Second challenge: becoming a lively community and a catalyst of individual development, especially lines 336 to 337).

To that end, I would add a new short paragraph somewhere between lines 223 and 266.

Then renumber your notes should not be of trouble.

 We are not famliar with the suggested works, so we are afraid to not to cite them properly. However, we have added a short paragraph (lines 241-247) stressing the link between open organization, social network and generation of innovation. 

3) It is only from a stylistic point of view that I would remove spaces in the text between the main paragraphs (example, between lines 88-9; 347-8; 488-9).

With regard to the excerpts, I would indent them on both sides of the page, but this advice must be agreed with the editorial board of the MDPI. I would center Figure 1 and the caption below that seem to me aligned to the left. I think that excerpts only smaller than the main paragraphs are somewhere forgotten in their importance of clarifying how the differences between backgrounds, objectives, decision-making processes and sustainable goals are conceptualized in the lively frameworks you have recorded and translated when needed in an engaging way.

 Thank you, we have removed spaces between the main paragraphs and centered Figure 1. With regard to the excerpts, we leave to the MDPI editoral board the final decision, since we do not know weather the suggested formatting changes are possible. 

3)    I would little rephrase lines 489 to 496 because the manuscript is well organized, and a foreseeable update is not of interest at the moment.

Thank you, we have rephrased and sharpened the paragraph.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled “ Translating sustainability into action: a management challenge in FabLabs” is a well-written  exploration of so-called fabrication laboratories (FabLabs). I think that manuscript may offer a valuable contribution to Psychology of Sustainability. However, please consider the following suggestions to improve this manuscript:

-the presentation of the results should be done in accordance with the assumptions of the research.

-authors' explanations regarding obtaining a limited body of data and only after conducting interviews should be presented as limitations of research

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your useful comments. Here belove our replies.

The manuscript entitled “ Translating sustainability into action: a management challenge in FabLabs” is a well-written  exploration of so-called fabrication laboratories (FabLabs). I think that manuscript may offer a valuable contribution to Psychology of Sustainability. However, please consider the following suggestions to improve this manuscript: 

-the presentation of the results should be done in accordance with the assumptions of the research.

If the reviewer means that we should better address our research questions in presenting results, we admit we have answered the first research question concerning the contradictions perhaps more profoundly than the second research question on promotion of sustainability. However, we have at least brief interpretations in regard to sustainability at the end of all of our sub-sections in the result section and we more clearly address this aspect in the discussion.

 To clarify this point, we have rephrased the title of the Results section and added a clause at lines 218-220.

-authors' explanations regarding obtaining a limited body of data and only after conducting interviews should be presented as limitations of research

Thak you, we have rephrased and presented the suggested aspects as limitations of the research.