Strategic Budgeting and Budgeting Evaluation Effects on China’s Manufacturing Companies’ Performance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have a few suggestions that should be incorporated in the revised version for making any final recommendation. I am unable to find the risk mitigation variable throughout this document. Why authors choose this terminology in the title. Please rewrite your title that more closely aligns with this research. I urge authors to highlight the motivation of this study and that too in the Chinese context. What underpinning theory has been employed to build your story? The study specify a sample of 527 participants. Do they belong to any specific province/geographic area because this sample seems small for whole of China. How many did you chose from each province/city? Please provide extensive rationale on your sample selection criteria. The literature review is also not convincing, try to establish link between the variables and then propose hypothesis. Try to minimize the unreferenced ideas. Establish coherence among arguments and direct them well towards your objectives. Table 2 correlation matrix is also confusing. How can the correlation of BPF with itself less than one? Same is the case with other variables in bold figures. Do these values depict any other rationale? If yes then provide explanation for it.   

Comments on the Quality of English Language

A proof reading/editing for language by a native speaker is highly recommended. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. We have addressed your concerns and revised almost whole of the manuscript. However, if there were specific ways, you would like us to address any remaining concerns, please let us know.

 

Sincerely Yours

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The statistical technique is weak. A more rigorous framework is needed.  Also, the paper needs to be edited very thoroughly.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The paper needs to be carefully edited. 

Author Response

Dear Editor

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. We have addressed your concerns and revised almost whole of the manuscript. However, if there were specific ways, you would like us to address any remaining concerns, please let us know.

Sincerely Yours

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of strategic budgeting and budget evaluation on the financial performance of Chinese manufacturing companies. SEM is used to validate the direct and indirect effects of budgeting slack on budget management performance. A number of 589 senior executives and finance managers survey data is used and SEM method is applied to this data. Abstract section should be re-written comprehensively. Sections should be explained at the end of the introduction section. The results and contribution of the paper is not clear. The research could benefit from further exploration of external economic factors influencing budgeting slack beyond internal management practices. The contribution to the field of financial management concerning the budget alignment with long-term strategic goals should be explained in the text.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some of the sentences cannot be understood and not clear. Authors may ask a native speaker to go over the text. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. We have addressed your concerns and revised almost whole of the manuscript. However, if there were specific ways, you would like us to address any remaining concerns, please let us know.

Sincerely Yours

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have addressed most of the reviewer comments but I am still not satisfied with the result of correlation analysis. How can a variable have correlation less than one with itself? Please rectify these values or correct me if I am wrong? 

Correlation of BPF with BPF  is reported as 0.833
Correlation of BEF with BEF  is reported as 0.771
Correlation of BS with BS  is reported as 0.782

Correlation of PBB with PBB  is reported as 0.787 

Secondly, the number of firms in whole of China is in multi thousands. Why only 589 questionaire are sent? Do you think it is sufficient representative of whole population? First report the whole population and then get the adequate sample that can be generalized for China.  

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. We have addressed your concerns and revised almost whole of the manuscript. However, if there were specific ways, you would like us to address any remaining concerns, please let us know.

Sincerely Yours

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Note the data source: A total of 527 Chengdu Public Cultural Concert Visitors filled out the questionanaires.

The data are a serious problem. At the minimum, a way to gather such information from a random sample would be needed. Were the questionnaires filled out in the same location? At the same time?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Could be improved. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. We have addressed your concerns and revised almost whole of the manuscript. However, if there were specific ways, you would like us to address any remaining concerns, please let us know.

Sincerely Yours

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The questionaires are not a sound data foundation.  The writing is weak. This is not a suitable fit for the journal. Send to a more appropriate journal.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing is weak. Not a suitable fit with the journal.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and helpful review. Allow us to inform you that, before deploying a pre-test questionnaire for data collection, two experts from the accounting and financial field and a professional English-Chinese translator were consulted to validate its readability and clarity. They assessed whether the questionnaire was easy to understand and whether any questions were confusing or overly complex. Based on their feedback, minor revisions were made to enhance clarity and comprehension. Afterwards, we conducted a pilot test to verify the final phrasing of the formal investigation. The pilot test aims to identify various responses and implications of the participants related to the questions in the pre-test. 20 participants were recommended for each construct to increase the quality of the instruments. Subsequently, a pilot test was implemented on 150 participants. It was acceptable for further statistical analyses and formal study (Hair Jr et al., 2019).

 

This study also applied common latent factor (CLF) and common method variance (CMV) to confirm data validity and reliability and to answer bias issues during the study.

 

The budget planning process that employed employees as a team to work with Chong and Mahama (2014). Employees and financial firm managers used all items to measure the budgeting evaluation function (Chong and Mahama 2014). Budgetary slack comprises employees' attitudes, manipulation, slack detection, authoritarianism, and budget relevancy, as referred to by Dunk (1993) and Maiga and Jacobs (2007). In this study, five items of performance dimensions-based budget budget standard, budget achievement, budget emphasis, budget efficiency, and target budget were adopted (Anthony and Govindarajan, 1998) (see Appendix). All of the research instrument sources were employed from reputable sources. It proves that we, as the authors, really care and are serious about our study.