Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study investigates how CSR practices in developing countries and management commitment play a role in export performance. Although I can see some merits in this manuscript, I think more clarifications are needed.

 

Literature Review

            I was confused about “management commitment” throughout the manuscript. It seems that the authors referred management commitment in terms of export in H1, however, the authors mentioned CSR management commitment in H2.

To figure this out, I looked at the measures and found some inconsistency. While few items are relevant to CSR (eg., “Our company's commitment to applying CSR practices to export activity is significant,” other items don’t look like concerning CSR and they are more likely to measure export management commitment (e.g., The extent of management engagement in export practice is considerable”). Thus, the more clarifications are needed. I took a look at one of the articles the authors cited when explaining their management commitment, Shamsuddoha & Ali, (2006) and found that the measure is “export commitment without any CSR component. If the authors intended to create and use CSR management commitment, I believe they need more explanation and clarification.

I found the rationale for H3 is also week. The authors explained the direct relationship between CSR and export performance in H2. However, I can’t see further arguments/supporting evidence regarding why CSR mediates the relationship between management commitment and sustainable export performance. The authors also did not mention any argument or empirical evidence of the mediating role of CSR (on export performance) from previous research. Based on what the authors argued, I am not convinced by the mediating role of CSR between management commitment and sustainable export performance.

 

Methods and Results

I admire that the authors tested measurement validity substantially including HTMT. However, again, I would like the authors to clarify their management commitment measure. Also, the authors should clarify that what they measured regarding export performance is self-reported perceived export performance, not actual export performance. Since it is self-reported data, I think the authors should clarify this. And I was also wondering if there is any possibility that social desirability affected the participants’ responses. This could apply to other constructs like commitment and CSR. I am also curious if there are any differences in the constructs among general, vice, and marketing manager, since what they do might affects their perceptions of their companies’ export performance.

Also, I am curious how the authors selected 260 enterprises out of the 400 companies. How did you include/exclude companies?

Data analyses are strong and rigorous. However, I would like to see if the findings remain significant after controlling some variables. Because there are many factors could affect CSR and export performance, it could be weak to argue the relationships found in the study without controlling relevant variables. There could be some available information/data, such as company size, numbers of employee, etc. While the authors’ data analysis is appropriate and strong, I don’t think the findings are practically and empirically significant enough without considering other factors.

 

Discussions

            I found the theoretical implications and contributions of this study are somewhat weak. The authors mostly addressed that their findings are consistent with the previous studies’ finding. I would like to see how this study contributes to the existing literature.

 

“Accordingly, the current study also lends credence to the stakeholder theory [103]. Because CSR practices guarantee the health and safety of employees, customer happiness, and community well-being, they improve the company's performance in the coffee export market.” P. 14

For example, it is unclear why and how CSR practices can improve “export” performance and how it is related to stakeholder theory.

 

Limitations

As I previously mentioned, the authors should address some more limitations, such as, the CSR and export performance were assesed by using self-reported data and other potential factors overlooked in the data analyses.

 

Missing Qualitative Data

Another issue is that I cannot really see data and results from the authors’ qualitative research methods. Did the author forget to report the results? Please double-check.

 

I think the manuscript has some merits, however, it needs some more clarifications to benefit the readers of Sustainability. I hope my comments will help.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by you.  We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Please, see the manuscript in green for a point-by-point response to the comments, suggestions, and questions. We look forward to hearing from you to respond to any further questions and comments you may have. Thank you so much again!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulations for this research. 

The paper is about the impact of corporate social responsibility and managerial commitment on sustainable export performance of Ethiopian coffee firms.  Although the topic of study is highly relevant and its application on these firms, there are several major problems, which needs to be revise.

Attached the authors can identify throughout the article the aspects that need to be revised.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments, and valuable improvements to our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by you. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Please, see the manuscript in green for a point-by-point response to the comments, suggestions, and questions. We look forward to hearing from you to respond to any further questions and comments you may have. Thank you very much again!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting topic that has not been broadly studied, and the data being from Africa, which is understudied (as the authors note), is a plus.  I think with a bit of strengthening, the paper's overall merit can be excellent.  I hope my comments below help the authors strengthen the paper.

"Management commitment" as used now is ambiguous.  When I first read the paper and abstract, I thought it was either commitment to CSR or commitment to sustainability.  It wasn't until the hypothesis section that I understood it be be commitment to exporting.  This makes sense, but please make very clear early in the introduction and also in the abstract that this is commitment to exporting.  I recognize that the abstract has a word count limit, but adding "to exporting" is two extra words and I'm sure you can revise the rest of the abstract to make room for that many.  In the introduction, maybe a sentence explaining what you mean, and the addition of "to exporting" in one or two places (not every place you use the term) would be enough.

It is interesting that barely more than 50% of coffee produced in Ethiopia is exported.  I think readers would like to know what happens to the remaining 47%.  Is it drunk domestically?  Is it discarded?  This seems important because of the strong implication that increasing the export percentage would be good for the country.  Would many Ethiopians be deprived of coffee if exports went to 75%?

The grammar is good overall, but you use "research" incorrectly in some places, such as on lines 57 and 60.  The text there should read, "Although several studies have examined.... some studies have discovered..."  Please make sure you fix this throughout (e.g., line 68).

A small thing:  H1 should be on its own line, not in the last line of a paragraph.  Please break them out accordingly.

In 2.4.2 you talk about management commitment to CSR, not to exporting.  This is not consistent with the earlier theory or the measures you use, with the partial exception of MC1.  I think it would make more sense to talk about management commitment to exporting being linked to CSR because managers who want to be successful at exporting may be aware that CSR helps performance (as you argue in 2.4.3).  Lenox and Toffel (2022) recently showed in this journal that making managers aware of the financial benefits of sustainable practices makes them more likely to implement them, which I think supports this argument.

In 2.4.3 and 2.5 you may want to consider mentioning Tang et al. (2012), who found that CSR increases the profitability of initiatives focused on external stakeholders, such as sustainability.  Their results offer strong support for your hypothesis, and I think they may have called for a study like yours. 

In 2.5, you should make clear that you are hypothesizing a partial mediation effect.  Your arguments do not suggest that CSR is the only way that managerial commitment, nor do your findings suggest this.  "X mediates Y's effect on X" normally means that there is no direct effect of X on Z when Y is included in the model.  In addition to adding "partial" to the hypothesis itself, I think you should expand this section significantly because it is very interesting and potentially one of the major findings of the study.

3.2:  I do not understand how your sample and sampling selection worked.  You mention 400 companies, then 260.  Then you surveyed the 260, and somehow (you do not explain) received responses from all 260 of them?  Also, you spoke with twenty different administrative levels.  I don't know what that means, but it sounds interesting.  Please explain.  In general, this section needs a lot of clarification.

If the authors are the source of a figure (e.g., FIgure 1, Figure 2), there is no need to attribute the figure to the authors' estimation.  Please remove these.

In the results, with a B of 0.648, you say that an increase in Managerial Commitment of 1 results in an increase of 64.8 units of CSR.  I believe this should be an increase of 0.648 units.  Please either change this or provide an explanation in the article for the other readers who will think as I do.

Also, I suggest that you do a robustness check in which you see if you get the same results without MC1 included in the factor.  The reason I'd exclude that one is that it's the only one that explicitly relates sustainability and managerial commitment, and sustainability is one of the other variables in this study.

6.1:  I agree that this work has implications for the RBV.  I think that you need to bring the RBV up more in the hypothesis development sections, and you need to rewrite this section's discussion of the study's contribution to theory.  I'm not sure exactly which way you should take it, but all you say so far is that these resources cause that success, which is consistent with the RBV but makes little contribution to it.

6.2: The practical implications could be more specific.  Imagine one of the coffee exporting company managers sitting in front of you saying, "OK, but what does this mean I should do differently?"  I like the implications for government, and you might want to consider mentioning Lenox and Toffel again here -- disseminating information about how to engage in sustainable practices profitably within large businesses leads to an increase in sustainable practices, so it's logical to expect that the government disseminating information about how to engage in sustainable practices profitably in Ethiopia would lead to a similar increase.  You might also want to speculate as to how far the results can be generalized.  What if I export chocolate, or tea?  Do you think I could still learn from your findings?

Finally, at the end of the article you mention that no IRB approval was needed.  I would like some explanation of this, given that you collected primary data, which normally does require some sort of IRB approval.  Does Wuhan University let some survey research have exempt status from IRB approval?  A sentence or so about why IRB approval wasn't needed should be included in the methods section, maybe in your revision to section 3.2.

I look forward to seeing the next iteration of this article.

Works Cited:

Lenox, M.J. and Toffel, M.W., 2022. Diffusing Environmental Management Practices within the Firm: The Role of Information Provision. Sustainability, 14(10), p.5911.

Tang, Z., Hull, C.E. and Rothenberg, S., 2012. How corporate social responsibility engagement strategy moderates the CSR–financial performance relationship. Journal of Management Studies, 49(7), pp.1274-1303.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes within the manuscript. Please, see the manuscript in green for a point-by-point response to the comments, suggestions, and questions. We look forward to hearing from you to respond to any further questions and comments you may have. Thank you so much again! 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This is an interesting paper which looks at management commitment and sustainable coffee exports and the impact of CSR as a mediating variable.

On page 21, please spell out RBV when it's first mentioned.

there are minor grammatical errors throughout the article. Please address.

Please provide justification for Ethopian coffee industry.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

We appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by you. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Please, see the manuscript in green for a point-by-point response to the comments and suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you to respond to any further comments, suggestions, and questions you may have. Thank you so much again! 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors adequately revised the manuscript and the current version is more strong and clear. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Your contribution is great to our paper.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

You have done most of the requested revisions. However, minor revisions are necessary, which  are indicated below.

I didn't see the review report.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We appreciate your contributions to the quality of our paper. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank for your work on revising this paper.  I have only one remaining concern, which is that readers will be confused about the data.  On lines 579-584, you say, "All participants were made aware of the study's goal prior to data collection. After that, each organization's representative (general manager, vice manager, or marketing manager) was given a self-administrated questionnaire to gather the necessary information. Seven questionnaires were eliminated because they contained missing data or had the data marked incorrectly, out of the 243 replies that were sent out to respond- ents. Last but not least, 236 surveys were used for additional analysis."

This sounds like you collected data directly from managers at these companies.  This is not publicly-available data, it's primary data so at my university you'd need an IRB approval.  Readers will wonder about this, so you need to clarify this.

Also, if I understand what you say correctly, you approached representatives of 260 companies and all of them filled out your survey.  This is a 100% response rate, or a 90.6% response rate after dropping unusable and incomplete responses.  I do not understand how you got such a high level of participation, and readers will likewise wonder.  Can you explain in the paper with a paragraph or two what you did to ensure that not one of the 260 potential respondents declined to participate?

I also still do not understand the part about twenty levels of administration -- I don't know what that means.  Please rephrase and expand that part as well.

Good luck

Author Response

We thank you very much for your unreserved contributions to the betterment of our paper. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf