Does ISO 9000 Certification Benefit Service Firms?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read the paper carefully. In general it is well written, except for some typhos in the text (word-wide line 29, first page; an excess space, line 246, page 6). The theme is very interesting and well described. Some doubts and comments that I would ask the authors to solve:

1. The database is from 2008. Is there no more recent one?

2. The propensity score matching is not clear to me. I would ask
for a more in-depth explanation with more technical equations or
explanations, if possible;

3. Is it possible to make a parallelism between ISO 9000 and CSR.
A reference to the literature that links CSR - certification and
performance, as for example:

When corporate social responsibility (CSR) increases performance: exploring the role of intrinsic and extrinsic CSR attribution

J Story, P Neves - Business Ethics: A European Review, 2015 - Wiley Online Library  

How corporate social responsibility engagement strategy moderates the CSR–financial performance relationship

Z Tang, CE Hull, S Rothenberg - Journal of Management …, 2012 - Wiley Online Library  

Corporate performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). A necessary choice?

P Gazzola, P Mella - Economia Aziendale Online, 2012 - riviste.paviauniversitypress.it  

Among others.  

Given these comments, I think that the paper is a good one.

Best Regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Does ISO 9000 certification benefit Service Firms?”(Manuscript ID: sustainability-611923). Your comments and suggestions are valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied your comments and suggestions carefully and made corrections based on them. Please see the attachment for our responses on your review comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

The paper is very interesting, professional written using academic standards, almost ready to published. I suggest to extend a little the results discussion.

Congratulation of good job.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your approbation on our paper and suggestion to extend results discussion. We have made corrections based on them. Please see the attachment for our responses on your review comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript investigates a potential side effect of ISO 9000 in China's service companies. The main hypothesis is that the signalling motivation for certifications can lead to inefficient company behavior, i.e., a productivity and profit loss against a gain in sales. The timing of certification (ISO 9000 and ISO 90001) is also expected to magnify this effect (that is stronger for early certifications), while it is unclear by technology segmentation. The empirical exercise is built on a counter-factual analysis and the results supports all the hypotheses posted by the authors (a brief note on H3 later in my report).

Based on the literature review presented by the authors, the novelty of their contribution is related to the case investigated (Chinese service companies) and the results obtained. Accordingly, there is an appreciable contribution to the literature, especially in the managerial domain.

The theoretical background sounds sufficiently exhaustive, although a broader conceptualization could be offered in the introductory section. The presentation of the empirical exercise is clear and complete, and the results appear to be robust. 

Searching for some weakness, H3 is only partially specified (H3A and H3B). Additional discussion might have supported a straighter claim. Furthermore, it could be stressed that, as I understand, the variable "foreign" does not substantially contribute to reducing a potential bias (lines 346–349). The coding of the dependent variables in Table 6 is not explained, and I would recommend to specify that those reported among brackets in the regression output tables are t statistics.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Does ISO 9000 certification benefit Service Firms?”(Manuscript ID: sustainability-611923). Your comments and suggestions are valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied your comments and suggestions carefully and made corrections based on them. Please see the attachment for our responses on your review comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf