Knowledge-Based Faultlines and Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Evidence from Chinese High-Polluting Companies
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors investigated “Knowledge-based faultlines and Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Evidence from Chinese High-polluting Companies”. While I find some merit in the work based on the relevance of the research problem, I have some reservations about the work which I feel the authors should address to enhance the quality of the work:
- Abstract
(i) The authors made use of some acronyms (TMT, CSiR and CSP) in the abstract without prior definitions. It is good practice to define such acronyms at the first usage before subsequent usages
(ii) In lines 3-5 of the abstract, the authors said “Using the upper echelons theory as theoretical framework to investigate how TMT faultlines influenced CSP based on data from 212 high-polluting companies.” What do they mean by this? The statement is incomplete. They should rework it
(iii) The authors also indicated that “Meanwhile, CEO power played significant moderating roles in the relationship between TMT faultlines and CSiR, and state-owned companies also validated this result.” The title is not suggestive that ”moderation” is part of the authors’ intentions
- Introduction
(i) There are so many grammatical errors in the work and the authors must do extensive proofreading to correct these errors, which are numerous. For example the beginning of the second paragraph of the introduction, they said “We review the influencing factors that affect CSiR, The study of factors influencing CSiR includes the following perspectives”, the “The” after CSiR in the second to the last line ought to be small letter since it was preceded by a comma. There are many other cases throughout the entire manuscript
(ii) In the second paragraph of the introduction, the authors said “We review the influencing factors that affect CSiR, The study of factors influencing CSiR includes the following perspectives”. Is the study a review?
(iii) The work is not very current. Out of about 44 references, about 43 are before 2017, and many are before 2000. The authors should revise the work to include many current citations.
(iv) The articulation of the research problem is not clear. The authors can improve on the problem formulation for more clarity
- Theoretical and Hypothesis:
(i) What do the authors mean by “Theoretical and hypothesis”? they tested more than one hypothesis, the plural of “hypothesis” is “Hypotheses”
(ii) It is not clear how the first hypothesis “There is a U-shaped relationship between knowledge-based faultlines and CSiR“ emerged from the literature
- Measures
(i) The authors said “This study selected high-polluting companies listed in Chinese A-shares from 2015 to 2019 as a research sample to investigate how TMT faultlines affected CSP. The data we chose are from before the COVID-19. Companies were selected as follows: (1) removing the sample of ST, *ST, SST, and S*ST companies “ what is the size of the population of the companies?
(ii) How was the sample size determined?
(iii) What was the sampling technique?
(iv) What is the specific method of data analysis?
- Results
(i) Beneath Table 1, the authors indicated “*p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01”. Where are the p values in the table? They did not indicate
- Conclusion: The authors failed to include a section on the conclusion. This is very inappropriate.
The quality of English Language is poor
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your comments on our article. Your comments provided great help in revising the article. We have revised the article based on your comments and have touched up the language in this article. The specific modifications are as follows:
- Abstract
(1) The authors made use of some acronyms (TMT, CSiR and CSP) in the abstract without prior definitions. It is good practice to define such acronyms at the first usage before subsequent usages
(2) n lines 3-5 of the abstract, the authors said “Using the upper echelons theory as theoretical framework to investigate how TMT faultlines influenced CSP based on data from 212 high-polluting companies.” What do they mean by this? The statement is incomplete. They should rework it
(3) The authors also indicated that “Meanwhile, CEO power played significant moderating roles in the relationship between TMT faultlines and CSiR, and state-owned companies also validated this result.” The title is not suggestive that ”moderation” is part of the authors’ intentions
Revision:
(1) We explained abbreviations, which we take very seriously and will be mindful of these in our future writing
(2) (3)We are very sorry for these errors, we have carefully proofread the article.
2.Introduction
(1) There are so many grammatical errors in the work and the authors must do extensive proofreading to correct these errors, which are numerous. For example the beginning of the second paragraph of the introduction, they said “We review the influencing factors that affect CSiR, The study of factors influencing CSiR includes the following perspectives”, the “The” after CSiR in the second to the last line ought to be small letter since it was preceded by a comma. There are many other cases throughout the entire manuscript
(2) In the second paragraph of the introduction, the authors said “We review the influencing factors that affect CSiR, The study of factors influencing CSiR includes the following perspectives”. Is the study a review?
(3) he work is not very current. Out of about 44 references, about 43 are before 2017, and many are before 2000. The authors should revise the work to include many current citations.
(4) The articulation of the research problem is not clear. The authors can improve on the problem formulation for more clarity
Revision:
(1) We apologise for the spelling and phrasing errors, which we have taken very seriously in this revision.
(2)(4) We have reworked the Introduction section, especially to clarify the context of the study, the research questions, gaps, main contribution.
(3) We checked the references in this section, we have not deleted the literatures before 2000 since most of them are classical, but we have added some literatures from recent years.
3.heoretical and Hypothesis:
(1) What do the authors mean by “Theoretical and hypothesis”? they tested more than one hypothesis, the plural of “hypothesis” is “Hypotheses”
(2) It is not clear how the first hypothesis “There is a U-shaped relationship between knowledge-based faultlines and CSiR“ emerged from the literature
Revision:
(1) We have modified it to Hypotheses
(2) We have modified the formulation of the hypotheses for Knowledge-based faultlines and CSiR to reflect the U-shaped relationship we are trying to validate. You can review 2.1 Knowledge-based faultlines and CSiR
- Measures
(1) The authors said “This study selected high-polluting companies listed in Chinese A-shares from 2015 to 2019 as a research sample to investigate how TMT faultlines affected CSP. The data we chose are from before the COVID-19. Companies were selected as follows: (1) removing the sample of ST, *ST, SST, and S*ST companies “ what is the size of the population of the companies?
(2) How was the sample size determined?
(3) What was the sampling technique?
(4) What is the specific method of data analysis?
Revision:
(1) With regard to ST, *ST, SST, and S*ST companies, we have switched to a different interpretation, describing them as companies with risk warnings on their stocks were removed.
We are very grateful to the reviewer for asking the question about what is the size of the population of the companies?
We do not consider the population of the companies when selecting the sample of firms, and even since our reference (Deng et al., 2020) does not consider this issue, we do not reflect it in the control variables. In order to avoid the problem of omitting important control variables, we take the logarithm of the number of employees as the control variable to conduct a robustness test, and fortunately our results still hold.
(2) In section 3.1 Sample and Data Collection first paragraph, we re-explained the sample data in detail, including why we choose high-polluting companies and why the start year is 2015, and in the Limitation section we explain why the data ends in 2019.
(3)(4): In section 3.1 Sample and Data Collection second paragraph, we re-explained how to remove the data and how to analyse them
5.Results:Beneath Table 1, the authors indicated “*p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01”. Where are the p values in the table? They did not indicate
Revision: We have reinterpreted *
6.Conclusion: The authors failed to include a section on the conclusion. This is very inappropriate.
Revision: We have included a Conclusion section in the Discussion section. And we also have reinterpreted the theoretical and practical contributions.
Thank you again for your proposed comments to this article.
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an exciting piece of work. Well written and doesn’t encounter any flaws that lead to further amendments. Good luck to the authors.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, Thank you very much for your approval of our article.
we have embellished the language and revised the Introduction and Discussion sections of the article, and We hope that our changes will improve the structure and quality of this article.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper on such an interesting and current topic!
However, there are still some aspects that need to be improved in order to publish it:
-a careful proofreading of the manuscript is necessary because there are many phrases that do not have a verb or need to be reformulated to make sense. These are indicated directly in the text of the article with yellow and comments.
-abbreviations are often used without any explanation (or are explained much later), which creates confusion and reading difficulties
- the structure of the work is not presented in the introduction and the contributions are not well highlighted either
- the results obtained are not corroborated with similar or opposite ones from the studied literature!!
- the sample, the chosen period, the high-polluting activity areas are very succinctly presented. More explanations and clarifications are needed in this regard.
- the influence of control variables is not discussed at all
- for the dependent variable CSiR, it is not clear if it is calculated by the authors (using the method from Di Giuli and Kostovetsky) or if it is directly taken from the databases. Also, it is not clear which dimensions (of the five CSP) are considered.
All these aspects can be relatively easily fixed. I wish the authors success in this endeavor!
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Moderate editing of English language required
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your comments on our article. Your comments provided great help in revising the article. We have revised the article based on your comments and have touched up the language in this article. The specific modifications are as follows:
1.a careful proofreading of the manuscript is necessary because there are many phrases that do not have a verb or need to be reformulated to make sense. These are indicated directly in the text of the article with yellow and comments.
Revision: We are very sorry for these errors, we have carefully proofread the article.
We also noted that you have questions about the interpretation of the removal of extreme values in our robustness tests. We considered this issue carefully and concluded that the explanation did seem a bit forced, so we changed the method of robustness testing and chose the method of lagging the DV by one year in previous studies for robustness testing, and the results still hold. You can view 4.4 Robustness testing
2.abbreviations are often used without any explanation (or are explained much later), which creates confusion and reading difficulties
Revision: We explained abbreviations, which we take very seriously and will be mindful of these in our future writing
3.the structure of the work is not presented in the introduction and the contributions are not well highlighted either
Revision: We have reworked the Introduction section, especially to clarify the context of the study, the research questions, gaps, main contribution.
The specific contributions to this paper have been reworked in Section 5.2 Contributions.
4.the results obtained are not corroborated with similar or opposite ones from the studied literature!!
Revision: In article 4.2 Regression results, we added a description of similar from the studied literature.
5.the sample, the chosen period, the high-polluting activity areas are very succinctly presented. More explanations and clarifications are needed in this regard.
Revision: We have added an explanation of the data source and the selected period in the 3.1 Sample and Data Collection
6.the influence of control variables is not discussed at all
Revision: In the previous study we did neglect to explain the control variables, in 4.1 Descriptive statistics and correlations, we added this section
7.for the dependent variable CSiR, it is not clear if it is calculated by the authors (using the method from Di Giuli and Kostovetsky) or if it is directly taken from the databases. Also, it is not clear which dimensions (of the five CSP) are considered.
Revision: We reinterpret the calculation of CSiR in 3.2.1 Dependent variable: CSiR
Thank you again for your proposed comments to this article.
Reviewer 4 Report
In this paper, the authors attempted to examine the Knowledge-based faultlines and Corporate Social Irresponsibility based on data from 212 high-polluting Chinese companies. The subject of this paper is of great interest. In general, the paper is well-motivated and is written in a clear and appropriate manner. Nevertheless, some doubts are raised and a number of aspects are suggested and commented on that could make the study clearer:
- It would be convenient to fix the Introduction to explain better the following issues: justification, motivation, objective, research questions and gaps, main contribution.
- The paper lacks a comprehensive review of the literature about the Corporate social irresponsibility (e.g. I suggest to analyze Riere and Iborre, 2017; Murphy and Schlegelmilch, 2013 and so on). Authors should expand theoretical background.
- The authors should provide a more thorough explanation for their choice to analyze China and consider the possibility of replicating the results for other countries (e.g., European countries or the United States). This consideration is essential due to the distinct characteristics of regulatory, legislative, and economic systems across different regions.
- Authors should review the text of the entire documents for errors, verify formatting, and include page numbers. For instance, on page 2 (second paragraph), there is a formatting error. On page 3, there is a repetition of the paragraph: 'TMT knowledge-based faultlines are a top management team structure that divides sub-groups based on the combination of knowledge characteristics such as experience and expertise,' and so on.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your comments on our article. Your comments provided great help in revising the article. We have revised the article based on your comments and have touched up the language in this article. The specific modifications are as follows:
1.It would be convenient to fix the Introduction to explain better the following issues: justification, motivation, objective, research questions and gaps, main contribution.
Revision: We have reworded the Introduction to clarify the justification, motivation, objective, research questions and gaps, and main contribution. You can see the specific changes of the Introduction section.
2.The paper lacks a comprehensive review of the literature about the Corporate social irresponsibility (e.g. I suggest to analyze Riere and Iborre, 2017; Murphy and Schlegelmilch, 2013 and so on). Authors should expand theoretical background.
Revision: We carefully read the reviewer recommended articles and added the theoretical background in the first and second paragraphs of the Introductory section.
3.The authors should provide a more thorough explanation for their choice to analyze China and consider the possibility of replicating the results for other countries (e.g., European countries or the United States). This consideration is essential due to the distinct characteristics of regulatory, legislative, and economic systems across different regions.
Revision: We explained the source of the data in the Sample and Data Collection section of the article. And the fact that we didn't consider companies from other countries really made it a limitation for our article, so we added that in the first paragraph of the Limitation section.
4.Authors should review the text of the entire documents for errors, verify formatting, and include page numbers. For instance, on page 2 (second paragraph), there is a formatting error. On page 3, there is a repetition of the paragraph: 'TMT knowledge-based faultlines are a top management team structure that divides sub-groups based on the combination of knowledge characteristics such as experience and expertise,' and so on.
Revision: We are very sorry for these errors, we have carefully proofread the article. We have attached great importance to editing the language in this revision.
Thank you again for your proposed comments to this article.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I commend the authors for responding to the queries painstakingly. I do not expect a resubmission of this manuscript. I am persuaded that the authors have answered the questions to the best of their ability. I suggest that they proofread the work thoughroughly ;
The quality of English is not bad but it can be improved
Reviewer 4 Report
I have appreciate their improvement. Good luck.
