Stopping or Continuing to Follow Best Practices in Terms of ESG during the COVID-19 Pandemic? An Exploratory Study of European Listed Companies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

 

I read your article with great interest. The manuscript puts together statistical analyses and investigations which are appropriate to an original research. My comments below try to help in the process of improving the current version of your manuscript by pointing out a number of changes that I think authors should be made in order to meet the “Sustainability” Journal requirements.

Topic originality and relevance to the field

The manuscript deals with the assessment of ESG practices implemented by companies originating from 17 European countries during the COVID-19 crisis, compared to the circumstances characteristic to the so-called “pre-COVID era”.

The analysis of effects brought about by the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic on ESG practices represents a very interesting avenue of research, but it is imperative that the authors clearly specify which type of practices they are approaching. Are they referring to reporting practices in line with ESG standards or their article makes direct reference to ESG investing in various programmes underpinning sustainability of their business operations?  

Within the abstract of the paper it is stated that the ESG score is taken from the STOXX 600 index, but I believe that more information is needed regarding the elements that enable the measurement of this score, in order to figure out what kind of practices are involved in the present study.

1.     Literature Review

This section is mainly focused on highlighting the impact of CSR programmes upon companies’ non-financial performance and reputation.

Within this section of the paper, I believe that the presentation of the main hypotheses that will underlie the construction of the regression model could significantly improve the process of understanding the motivations that triggered authors’ interest towards specific variables and statistical analyses performed in the paper.

2.     Methods

As far as the research sample is concerned, the content of the abstract states that the sample is constituted of 600 European companies that were investigated between 2018-2021 (see line 16). On the other hand, the statistical tables included in the paper imply that 360, 396, 462 or 468 companies were included in the sample (see Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4).Please clarify the number of companies that were included in your research sample.

I also think that some additional information on the sampling procedures would be very helpful for researchers from other parts of the Globe who would be interested in replicating the present study. To be more specific, I suggest authors to provide further details on the approach they employed in order to determine the sample size and to choose the most appropriate sampling method.

Above all, I believe that a synthetic graphical representation of the main variables used in the regression model and their role (dependent or independent variables) would be very helpful for the reader to understand the authors' research efforts endeavors and their purposes.

 

3.     Empirical Results

I think authors must go deeper into this section and explain better the censoring procedure they made use of in paragraph 4.2.2.

I would also ask the authors to indicate the software programs (and their versions) which were used in order to carry out statistical investigations such as regression analysis and robustness tests.

Finally, according to the ”Instruction for Authors” available on the website, all Tables should be numbered following their number of appearance within the text and they should also have a short explanatory title and caption.

 

4.     Discussion

The section contains a comprehensive summary of the results of the study. However, I think that authors should make proper linkages to other upt-to-date studies conducted in the same field. Considering the sample size and the dependent variables included in the regression model, I suggest authors to carry out a few cross-industries comparisons or to elaborate more on the relationship between the economic performance (measured through indicators such as ROE, ROI, ROA etc.) and the ESG practices. I think such an approach should add substantial value to the results of their research.

5.     References

Please prepare carefully the List of references. In this part of the paper, I have noticed an error within this part of the paper: see the position 27 which makes reference to a paper released in 2016 and this specific paper approaches the COVID-19 issue.

6.     Technical Notes

Last but not least, I consider that the flow of ideas in the manuscript should be improved by correcting a few minor English grammar errors. For instance, see the following phrase from page 3 of your manuscript (lines 120-121): “Legitimacy theory predicts that companies are committed to operating within the values and "social norms" dictated by the context in which to follow” or the phrase from lines 272-273: “This is, it accounts for individual heterogeneity.”

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your manuscript. However, I do have a few comments.

1.      Authors should address the research problem of the study more clearly as an exploratory study.

2.      The contribution of this study is not clear, authors need to provide a clear contribution of the literature, it’s very short.

3.      Please discuss the research results in more detail and in depth.

4.      Please expand the discussion with other research results.

5.      Please add titles for each table.

Regards

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript presents an exciting and current topic. It also contains sufficiently new and significant knowledge. The purpose of the investigation is original, but the Introduction is challenging to read because of its format. Be sure to divide it into paragraphs, making reading easier for readers.

In my opinion, the theoretical background should be expanded. I realize that the selected research problem is very up-to-date. Still, the thread on the foundations of ESG should be added to the text - perhaps enriched with a graphic element explaining its connection and relations with other concepts such as sustainable development, responsible investing, CSR, etc.

 

 

However, I have the most considerable reservations regarding the appearance and format of the tables - they are not uniform in the text. They do not fully comply with the standards of MDPI journals. It must be changed - no titles, no sources, and different fonts are used. In the text, the authors refer to table 5, which is missing in the article - it seems that it has not been inserted.

 

Finally, the subsections: Discussion and Conclusion should be expanded - in the current version, they are too poor. There are no references to the work of other scientists. The conclusions are pretty limited; there are no specific indications for entrepreneurs and the implications that have been proven in the study.

I wish the author's success in correcting the article.

Good luck and be healthy! 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

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