Assessment of Enterprise Life Cycle Based on Two-Stage Logistic Model: Exemplified by China’s Automobile Manufacturing Enterprises

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Journal：Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050)

Manuscript number：sustainability-1880759

In the manuscript entitled “Assessment of Enterprise Life Cycle based on Two-stage Logistic Model: Exemplified by China’s Automobile Manufacturing Enterprises”, the authors use two-stage logistic model to evaluate the enterprise life cycle and use China’s automobile manufacturing enterprises as examples. In summary， the contribution of this study is insufficient, the analysis is confusing and the content is thin. My concerns are shown below.

1. The literature review are not well cited, especially in Chapter 1.2. Although the literature cited in Chapter 1.2 is classic, there is a lack of analysis of recent studies. The research and measurement of enterprise life cycle does not stay in the last century.  Moreover，Chapter 1.2 mainly explains the stage division of enterprise life cycle and uses Miller (1984) to explain in detail. However, this part lacks further literature support, and not all the theories and suggestions about enterprise life cycle are put forward by Miller.

2. In chapter 2, the author explains the evaluation of enterprise life cycle by using population dynamics model and two-stage logistic model, because the fusion of methods is the breakthrough of current life cycle research (you can cite the literature:” Wang, N., & Tang, G. (2022). A Review on Environmental Efficiency Evaluation of New Energy Vehicles Using Life Cycle Analysis. Sustainability”). I hope to see a brief introduction of the population dynamics model and the two-stage logistic model, as well as the current research situation and necessity about why and how to use these models in the enterprise life cycle or other life cycles. Furthermore, the introduction of the population dynamics model and the two-stage logistic model should be separated, for there is no strong correlation at present.

3. This paper uses the two-stage logistics model to measure enterprise life cycle. Can the key indicators to determine which life cycle an enterprise is in be found in the two-stage logistics model? Can you use pictures to make it more intuitive?

4. The author's detailed data selection in Chapter 2.2 makes this paper authentic and reliable. The corresponding company profile can be moved into the supporting materials to reduce the space.

5. The indicators used in Chapter 2.2 (Total operating income) are not mentioned in the two-stage logistic model in Chapter 2.1. Please add them.

6. In short, the current form of this manuscript hardly meets the publishing standards in terms of contribution and expression, and it needs comprehensive improvement.

Author Response

1. The article supplemented more than 20 literatures and revised the contents of literature review.
2. The introduction is added in the method and data section. And cited the literature recommended by the reviewer.
3. The article adds a new evaluation matrix. It provides a very intuitive evaluation method.
4. The introduction of the enterprise is deleted from the article.
5. Relevant explanations are added in the article.

The modifications in the text are indicated in red font.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. This study assessed enterprise life cycle based on two-stage logistic model. I consider the methodology of this study to be very ideal. However, there are several severe problems, which are discussed below:

 

1. Absence of introduction formula

I am wondering about the structure of your introduction. In my opinion, you include all relevant aspects of an introduction (see introduction formula), but there does not seem to be a clear structure in introduction part.

 

2. Overall, I think this study needs to be supplemented with theories and existing studies. Moreover, the authors need to review related literature more thoroughly to demonstrate what research gaps should be filled based on previous research.

○ The authors reveal that this study is based on ecological theory. However, there is no section introducing the theoretical background. Therefore, in this study, it seems necessary to add part 2. Theoretical Backgound and put 2.1 ecological theory, 2.2 enterprise life cycle, 2.3 stages of enterprise life cycle, 2.4 assessment of enterprise life cycle into it.

○ The authors need to explain the differences between the enterprise life cycle and the product life cycle in 2.2. Please add it to the enterprise life cycle section.

○ Researchers describe that Enterprise Life Cycle is based on the resource endowment theory, but there is no explanation for that theory. It seems that the theory needs an explanation.

○ Researchers describe "...the number of stages varies from 3 to 10", depending on the researcher. Please organize the contents into a <table>.

○ Implications should be divided into academic implications and practical implications.

Author Response

1. The author supplemented the theoretical background and formula.
2. The article has supplemented more than 20 references and added introduction. The structure of the paper is fine tuned. Thank the reviewers for their suggestions. The author puts the theoretical background of ecology in the second section. Mainly ecological methods are mainly methods in this paper. The life cycle theory is also the main research object of this paper, so in the first part of the method.
3. The author added the explanation of resource endowment.
4. The author made corresponding modifications.
5. The author has added the explanation of academic significance and practical significance.

The modifications in the text are indicated in red font.

Reviewer 3 Report

Review for Manuscript ID: sustainability-1880759

The topic is interesting, yet serious concerns exist regarding the work and its contributions.

 

1.      Introduction section

1.1  The introduction part isn’t delivered clearly. Significance of the research, the need to study this topic, and more elaboration of the main subject. I am just reading a brief summary of the different stages of the enterprise life cycle coming from previous studies.

1.2  You are writing a literature review however; the authors are missing what the knowledge gap from present studies that leads to the rationale of this project is.

1.3  The authors didn’t mention the relationship between enterprise life cycle and two-stage logistics. 

1.4  Also, I cannot find the contribution to knowledge, as stated by the authors…

1.5  You mentioned “This research focuses on the growth of a sample of China’s automotive manufacturing enterprises, especially the decline phenomenon of these enterprises. Therefore, this study divides the life cycle of the enterprises into three stages: growth period, maturity period, and decline period. In this study, the birth and the growth period are combined into one, and the recovery period is considered as a special type of “reverse growth” in the recession period.”  I found that there is no theoretical foundation why you combined birth and growth stage, and recovery as “reverse growth”? It’s like randomly stated without foundation or academic argument.

1.6  In the Assessment of Enterprise Life Cycle – the authors mentioned a variety of variables that are used for the assessment of the stages, however, there is no concrete argument on the findings of previous authors. The author only briefly indicates the factors and concludes that there is no unified method for assessing the life cycle of enterprises. It’s a mistake to conclude by just stating all the indicators with academic analysis and concluding that they don’t reflect ecological theory. The authors also never discuss or analyze what is ecological theory.

 

2.      Methodology and Data

2.1  The authors introduce “socio-economic ecosystem” however, there is no concrete relationship from the Introduction and literature review content. And why did the authors choose this method?

2.2  Again, the authors introduce another model “Population dynamics models” however, there is no concrete relationship from the Introduction and literature review content. And why did the authors choose this method?

3.      Empirical analysis

3.1  The authors didn’t provide a concrete argument why they choose China’s automobile industry, it is like it is just randomly.

3.2  And how did the authors choose the sample companies are not given. What are the reasons why the authors choose these companies: CA-Ford, BJ-Hyundai, Lifan, Gac-Jeep, Gac-Fiat, Qoros, Borgward, SAIC-VW and Geely. The companies are mixed of foreign and local brands. WHY?

 

3.3  Also the authors just provide descriptions of each automotive company that you can read from the Wikipedia without relating to the purpose of the study.

3.4  The authors mentioned, “Due to the limitation of space, the monthly sales data of Chinese automobiles by year are given in this paper, as shown in Table 2.” What do you mean by due to the limitation of space?

3.5  The logistics model regression results of Table 3 are unclear on how the authors came up with the results.

3.6  The authors concluded that China’s automobile industry is still under the development stage based on the results of intrinsic growth rate and internal inhibition coefficient but what are the criteria that you came up with this conclusion?

3.7  Again, the authors made a conclusion that “the maximum upper limit of sales volume for the majority of firms occurs in 2016 or 2017. This is basically in line with the trend of the overall sales volume of China’s auto market“ based on “theoretical upper limit of the sales volume of the enterprise” but what are the criteria of lower and upper limit?

3.8  The authors indicate that “The theoretical upper limit (K) of the population measured in the first stage is the most important object of analysis in the second stage of the analysis.” What is the foundation of this statement?

3.9  The discussions in Second-stage logistic model section, are just general discussions on what is happening in the current situation of the automotive market and automotive brands, there are no unique findings or concrete scientific foundation on how to analyze the findings in relation to the situations.

3.10 Why choose BYD for the Robustness test of logistic model?

 

4.      Results and Discussion Part

4.1  The discussion section should explain the results and support the findings with earlier studies and explain the uniqueness of the research. The authors have presented the findings and described them, but they have not interpreted or explained the findings.

 

5.      Conclusion

5.1  The conclusion and future research are poorly written.

5.2  Please provide some theoretical implications and practical implications in your conclusion part.

 

Based on all of this, I think your manuscript is not publishable in its current form. My apology that I need to reject it in its current form. I hope the authors find my comments helpful.

Also, please check the plagiarism rate of your paper because the rate is high for original research.

Author Response

1. The author supplemented the references and revised the literature review. This paper supplements the introduction of ecological theory. The author added the reasons for choosing the automobile manufacturing industry. The author revised the expression of enterprise life cycle segmentation.
2. The author makes up for the lack of narration by introducing the theory of social ecosystem.
3. The author introduces the reasons for sample selection. The sample selection comprehensively considers the type and operation time of enterprises, and also considers the selection of joint ventures and independent brand enterprises. The theoretical upper limit in this paper is calculated by the logistic model (the logistic model here is not a logistics model). The reason why BYD is selected for robustness test is supplemented in the paper.
4. The authors supplement the findings of the study.
5. The author supplemented the conclusion of the study.

The modifications in the text are indicated in red font.

Reviewer 4 Report

 

This study used a two-stage logistic model to assess the life cycle of an enterprise. While the enterprise life cycle theory is a useful lens to examine the evolution of enterprises, the paper needs to provide a more coherent discussion of how the proposed model was built on the  enterprise life cycle theory and other related theories as mentioned in the paper. Some detailed comments are listed below:

 

·       The last sentence of the abstract is missing some key words as it says that “the results showing that the enterprise should withdraw from the market by insolvency liquidation or restructuring when both the intrinsic growth rate and internal inhibition coefficient are less than.” Less than what?

·       The authors provided a rather comprehensive review of the literature, which is commendable. Based on the literature review, there are a variety of divisions regarding the stages of enterprise life cycle. The authors proposed a three-stage life cycle, why? More rationale should be provided.

·       The authors also need to provide a clear justification of why they chose population as the characteristic to explain the stage changes in an enterprise’s life cycle. In the first paragraph of section 2, the authors argue that “If a socio-economic system is considered as an ecosystem, the enterprises in the socio-economic system can be considered as the populations in it. The population dynamics model can well express the symbiotic relationship between populations.” Based on this statement, the enterprises are the population, but in the following section 2.1, the paper then states that “the products sold by an enterprise are considered as a product population [42] and the growth dynamics system within population 1 (P1)…” What is the relationship between enterprise population and product population?

·       This study particularly is concerned about the factors explaining the occurring of the decline stage. Why? And, why the other two stages are not addressed?

·       The time range of the data is about 15 years. Would this be sufficient to explain life cycle? Also, the life cycle of enterprises in different industries can be largely different from industry to industry. The results based on the automotive industry can have very limited generalizability toward other industries.

·       Lastly, the paper concludes that enterprises should look at the intrinsic growth rate and internal inhibition coefficient to decide whether to withdraw from the market. It seems to be a rather unrealistic guideline for businesses to apply in decision making.

 

 

Author Response

1. The author supplemented the missing part.
2. The author modified the life cycle segmentation. Four cycle segmentation is adopted.
3. The author gives the supplementary information of ecosystem in the theoretical part of the second section.
4. This article focuses on the recession stage, aiming to provide early warning for enterprises in recession.
5. The data range is 15 years. Among them, the actual life cycle of some samples is not as long as 15 years.
6. The modified matrix model conforms to the actual situation.

The modifications in the text are indicated in red font.

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for this article, I enjoyed reading it,

Besides of some typos in the text that need extra proofreading, I have some few remarks that might enhance its quality:

- section 1.1: please provide a comprehensive outcome of this first review on enterprise life cycle

- section  1.2: following the reading and the reasoning behind, do you think it will be relevant to provide a comprehensive abstract/figure, or a list of main criteria/characteristics to consider for the firm life cycle ?

- section 1.3: Please use "literature review" instead of "current research"

- section 1.3: "(4) the current research is mainly isolated and static life cycle assessment, lacking dynamic analysis and comparative analysis " please provide more insights on this conclusion as the literature was not fully investigated here.

- section 1.3: we understood from the last paragraph of the section that authors will rely on one single case (automotive) without providing a comparative analysis. Do authors believe that a comparative study will increase the robustness of the model ? The sample size seems to be small. Please also justify this limitation.

Please also adjust the quality of the figures.

Author Response

The author thanks the fifth reviewer for the valuable comments.

(1) The author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the literature review of enterprise life cycle.

(2) The author gives a table to illustrate the relevant literature.

(3) The author revised it according to his suggestions.

(4) The author deleted this comment.

(5) The author supplements the research sample of robustness analysis.

(6) The author revised some figures. The revised part in the text is indicated in red font.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In the manuscript entitled “Assessment of Enterprise Life Cycle based on Two-stage Logistic Model: Exemplified by China’s Automobile Manufacturing Enterprises”, the authors use two-stage logistic model to evaluate the enterprise life cycle and use China’s automobile manufacturing enterprises as examples. In general, the current version has comprehensively answered my questions with the first round of revision, the overall quality of the paper has been improved and the current level of the paper has reached the standard of publication.

Author Response

The author thanks the fifth reviewer for the valuable comments.

(1) The author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the literature review of enterprise life cycle.

(2) The author gives a table to illustrate the relevant literature.

(3) The author revised it according to his suggestions.

(4) The author deleted this comment.

(5) The author supplements the research sample of robustness analysis.

(6) The author revised some figures. The revised part in the text is indicated in red font.

Reviewer 2 Report

I requested revision in terms of formality and content of the original manuscript to the author(s). However, since none of the revisions to the content fixed by my comment were reflected in the revised version, the reviewer makes a decision not to publish this study.

Author Response

The author thanks the fifth reviewer for the valuable comments.

(1) The author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the literature review of enterprise life cycle.

(2) The author gives a table to illustrate the relevant literature.

(3) The author revised it according to his suggestions.

(4) The author deleted this comment.

(5) The author supplements the research sample of robustness analysis.

(6) The author revised some figures. The revised part in the text is indicated in red font.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, I think this study needs to be supplemented with theories and existing studies. Moreover, the authors need to review related literature more thoroughly to demonstrate what research gaps should be filled based on previous research. Just like I mentioned in my first review, this paper needs a major revision and an in-depth analysis of the chosen subject. The manuscript is not publishable in current form.

 

Author Response

The author thanks the  reviewer for the valuable comments.

(1) The author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the literature review of enterprise life cycle.

(2) The author gives a table to illustrate the relevant literature.

(3) The author revised it according to his suggestions.

(4) The author deleted this comment.

(5) The author supplements the research sample of robustness analysis.

(6) The author revised some figures. The revised part in the text is indicated in red font.

Reviewer 4 Report

The revision addressed my previous comments. Thank you for the work.

Author Response

The author thanks the reviewer for the valuable comments.

(1) The author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the literature review of enterprise life cycle.

(2) The author gives a table to illustrate the relevant literature.

(3) The author revised it according to his suggestions.

(4) The author deleted this comment.

(5) The author supplements the research sample of robustness analysis.

(6) The author revised some figures. The revised part in the text is indicated in red font.

Reviewer 5 Report

The article quality seems to be enhanced. it is better now