Business Group-Affiliation and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Listed Companies in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study examines the effect of business group affiliation on economic and social/environmental responsibility performance (CSR in general) by considering some mediating variables. This study is quite informative to indicate that a firm's CSR decision is affected not only by the firm but also by its affiliated peer companies within a business group. However, I believe this study has several shortcomings in research methods that should be clearly addressed. I hope the authors consider some of my following concerns.

The second hypothesis (H2) depicts that resource allocation, rent-seeking, and corporate reputation play a mediating role in the relationship between the business groups and CSR. However, those mediating variables are not adequately tested in the sub-section 4.2.

First of all, the testing models should be provided in the '3.3 Model design' section as follows (I do not quote all variables, just name independent and mediating variables):
(1) for resource allocation:
Resource allocation = b0 + b1*Group + b2*Controls...
CSR = b0 + b1*Group + b2*ResourceAllocation + b3*Controls...

(2) for rent-seeking:
BAE = b0 + b1*BAE + b2*Controls...
CSR = b0 + b1*Group + b2*BAE + b3*Controls...

(3) for corporate reputation:
Good.

Particularly, in this manuscript, the rent-seeking variable (BAE) does not have any relationship with CSR, which is quite confusing.

Second of all, the mediating effect should be clearly and adequately tested. The authors need to use at least one of the recommended test methods: Baron&Kenny method, Sobel test, and/or Bootstrap method.
Besides, in the 4.2.3 Mechanism of corporate reputation section, the corporate reputation's mediating effect is not supported in contradiction to the authors' argument (lines 378-385). Table 7 model 2 does not show significance regarding the relationship between Fame and CSR. To be supported, the relationship between fame (mediating variable) and CSR should be significant.

Third of all, the result and discussion section should be elaborate to provide more academic and practical implications. The authors seem to be steeming out in the last part of the manuscript.

Author Response

It’s our pleasure for your great help to improve our work. We’ve read your suggestions very carefully and made our amendments. We’ll explain every single detail of the revisions in the manuscript and response to your suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The topic is interesting and up to date. It is relevant to the theory and practice. However, some improvements are needed to make the manuscript in line with journal publication standards.

1. Abstract: please, focus this more on your results than on the problem stating.

2. Introduction and Literature review section are fall to provide exact novelty, finding, and problem definition. Thus, authors are advised to recreate those section very carefully. The literature review is very sketchy (Literature review should be keyword basis). Please expand it and link your considerations with SDGs. Authors should betetr analyze the findings and research gaps from previous researchers.
It is worth to refer to the works of the following authors:

Sroufe, R., & Gopalakrishna-Remani, V. (2019). Management, social sustainability, reputation, and financial performance relationships: An empirical examination of US firms. Organization & Environment, 32(3), 331-362. Zimon, D.; Tyan, J.; Sroufe, R. Implementing Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Reactive, Cooperative, and Dynamic Models. Sustainability 2019, 11, 7227. Shaharudin, M. S., Fernando, Y., Jabbour, C. J. C., Sroufe, R., & Jasmi, M. F. A. (2019). Past, present, and future low carbon supply chain management: A content review using social network analysis. Journal of cleaner production, 218, 629-643. Zimon D., Tyan J., Sroufe R. (2020), Drivers of sustainable supply chain management: practices to alignment with un

3. Need proper explanation of each table, such that reader can understand your work. Too many tables, too few conclusions. Consider limiting the number of tables. Possibly expand their interpretation.

4. Conclusions must be separated from Discussion – this is a common and strict requirement in all international journals. Results must only describe and slightly generalize your findings. Discussion must 1) tell what do these findings mean and 2) put these findings and interpretations in the context of the international research.

5. The findings are a good basis for discussion but authors have to answer the following questions: What does this research tell us that we didn’t already know? What new does this paper bring to the table? This paper will have more value if the authors can tie the conclusions with numerical results from their study and compare them with the findings by previous researchers.

Good Luck !

Author Response

It’s our pleasure for your great help to improve our work. We’ve read your suggestions very carefully and made our amendments. We’ll explain every single detail of the revisions in the manuscript and response to your suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulation on your work. The theme is very interesting and current.

Below I will try to summarize some of my main concerns with this document. Hope it helps to keep working:

The introduction should be further developed. I think authors should devote greater efforts to justifying their research gap and motivate the interest of this paper.

The arguments leading to all hypotheses are quite weak and under-developed. I would urge authors to dig deeper into the papers that have explored this topic to better justify their arguments and the novelty of their hypotheses.

For instance, you have the following sentence "Compared to independent companies, business groups have greater incentives for rent-seeking due to their expanding scale and diversified operations. In competitive industries, active rent-seeking behavior enables groups to cross the high entry barriers and achieve higher sales revenues [35]. ", but the H3 is in line 174.

Regarding results, I felt difficult to understand which hypotheses were validated or not. A table summarizing the validation (or not) of those hypotheses would be good. 

Regarding discussion, I didn't see a single sentence discussing the results In fact, the whole Discussion and Conclusions chapter has 3 sentences! This is the conclusion, not the discussion. You must compare your results with literature, at least. This chapter should be rewritten in order to have a true discussion of your results. 

Author Response

It’s our pleasure for your great help to improve our work. We’ve read your suggestions very carefully and made our amendments. We’ll explain every single detail of the revisions in the manuscript and response to your suggestions.Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe the authors have tried their utmost to revise the original manuscript by considering my comments and suggestions. Some concerns on the method to test the mediating variables (i.e., rent-seeking and reputation) remain less clear. However, the revised manuscript is informative enough to be published. I hope the authors notice the abovementioned concern in the limitation and future research direction section. 

Reviewer 2 Report

I only have one comment. Please change the order of sections 5 and 6. Move the conclusions to the end of the article (after discussion). 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

Congratulation on your improved paper. I believe that you have done all the suggested corrections. 

Regards