The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and Firm Performance and the Moderating Role of Firm Life Cycle Stages: Evidence from China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article entitled "The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and Firm Performance and Moderating Role of Firm Life Cycle Stages: Evidence From China" deals with a very interesting topic as it addresses the controversial issue of the relationship between CSR and firm performance. However, this article only analyses CSR from the point of view of reporting.
Although it is a topic that needs further research, especially to try to help companies understand what factors influence their performance, this article has some flaws that need to be corrected:
Already in the abstract the objective is contradicted with the result, the relationship is opposite in each approach, it is not clear if the authors want to see if CSR influences performance or on the contrary the relationship is inverse. Then it says that they have found statistically significant differences with 5 control variables, but they name ten.
The introduction is well done, setting out the state of the art and making it clear what the aim of the research is and what it contributes.
In the section on literature and establishment of hypotheses, hypothesis H1a is incomplete. Furthermore, as in the summary, during the development of the hypotheses, the possible effect of CSR on performance is mentioned, but then the hypothesis is stated in the opposite direction. This should be clarified by the authors, and a figure showing the proposed model would help a lot.
Another incorrect thing is that hypothesis H1c is stated and then theoretically justified. The order is reversed. Hypothesis H2a is not well written.
In the conclusions there is no discussion of the results comparing those obtained with others previously reported by researchers in similar studies.
The references do not follow the format established by MDPI. In addition, there are many errors in the text, such as extra points, double spaces, etc. A detailed reading of the article is required. Furthermore, these references are not very up to date, as in recent years many articles have been published that analyse the relationship between CSR and performance and the authors have not taken them into account.
Based on the above, I consider that the article needs some important changes.
Author Response
Respected professor,
I have make all the necessary and suggested suggestion as you proposed on the review of the paper,now i uploaded the paper again hope this time it will be according to your suggestion and will accept soon for publication.
Regards
Naveed Jan
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper deals with an interesting, important, and topical research problem concerning Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and Firm Performance and Moderating Role of Firm Life Cycle Stages. The research method was properly selected and made it possible to achieve the main goal of the work. The selection of the research problem was properly justified.
The structure of the work is correct and orderly (the paper is very well-structured). In the part of the work covering the literature review, reference should be made to the more research results in this area. I have also reservations regarding the Conclusions part. There is no information on how results are consistent or inconsistent with similar papers/research. What is the justification for the adopted time range of the research? I did not find information about this in the article. The authors should explain what was the criterion for selecting the years 2009 -2016 (now we have the year 2021).
The Paper should be also adapted to the editorial requirements (e.g. incorrect form of citation). Also, there are references to literature in the paper that are not in the references list (e.g. line 341, 351 - there are numbers 60, 160, 161, 166, while the references list contains 35 items).
Author Response
I have make all the necessary and suggested suggestion as you proposed on the review of the paper,now i uploaded the paper again hope this time it will be according to your suggestion and will accept soon for publication.
Regards
Naveed Jan
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am pleased to note that the authors have done a substantial amount of work and that they have taken into account all the suggestions I made in the first revision.
