The Effect of Blockchain Operation Capabilities on Competitive Performance in Supply Chain Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for your analysis.

The paper is interesting. However, I believe that it is far from the aim and scope of the Sustainability Journal. The article is highly technical and lacks in terms of managerial and practical implications. Additionally, just starting reading the title, abstract, and keywords, it is evident that the main topic is far from an in depth-analysis of economic, environmental, or social sustainability.

Unfortunately, I did this thinking after just looking for the term "Sustainability" within the paper. There is one time within the text, and it is almost absent in all the other parts. It is evident also reading the introduction and conclusion sections. 

Another vital concern is related to the methodology section. Here, it would help if you enhanced transparency, giving more elements about the pool of interviews you selected. What kind of people respond? You should provide some aspects. 

Finally, related to the primary purpose of the Journal. The questionnaire should include a sustainability part, and each "Intra-organization management capabilities" item should be linked with one or more references (as literature review). 

In terms of discussion and conclusion sections, the paper lacks a broad discussion section that joins your results and previous elements presented within the literature review section. 
Finally, conclusions are too technical and few managerial. How should a manager use your data? What kind of implications for them?
For all these premises, my final suggestion for the editorial office is to reject the paper. 

All the best
The Reviewer 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In his article the authors explore the relationship between BCOC and competitive performance. They construct an ierarchical model for BCOC and tested it by using an online survey to collect data from managers with BCT experience.

Blockchains is just a different way of storing and sharing information. It may have many advantages, as mentioned in the article, but it also has disadvantages such as poor performance, poor scalability, etc.  So, One would expect the authors to compare BOOC  with other forms of data storage, for example with cloud databases.

 

Big data means an enormous volume of data with a great diversity of data being collected at great speed so, I don’t understand way the authors are involving big data in the article.

 

I think that sometimes the authors are mixing and comparing concepts that are not comparable. For example, in the sentence “we conclude that the main differences among BCOC, IT capability, and big data analysis capability lie in the fact that BCOC pursues data transparency and authenticity when inputting data;

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In this article, the authors proposed a blockchain operation capabilities (BCOC). The BCOC model is clearly shown in Figure 1. The authors used a survey to calculates the impaction on supply chain integration (SCI) and competitive performance (CP). The research proposed by the authors is very complete, and there are enough data results to support their conclusions.

Some issues need to be modified to make the article better and complete, the issues are listed as follows:

• Please describe the abbreviation in table 2: alpha, CR, AVE.
• Corrections in some formats to make it easier for readers to read, for example, table 3 in line 407, try not to wrap the text in the field of the "Category" column.
• There are maybe some mistakes about the total number of "Industry" dimensions in table 3, the sum of percentage is 110%, please explain it.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

My comments regarding the manuscript entitled "The Effect of Blockchain Operation Capabilities on 2 Competitive Performance in Supply Chain  Management" are listed below:

• The authors should proof-read the document for the use of the English language
• It is a good practice to capitalize the letters that formulate an abbreviation, e.g. "blockchain technology (BCT)", "supply chain management (SCM)"
  - I suggest that the questionnaire of Table 2, should be placed in the appendix and not in the main text of the paper.
  - I cannot find the relevance of some references/citations within the text. For example, at lines 375-378 authors describe how pretesting of the questionnaire was performed, and they cite [75]. Has this methodology of testing proposed by [75] and adopted here? At line 431, are all citations [90-93] actually needed? I have the feeling that authors "over-cite" other research works.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

I denote an hard work behind this research paper. Even if my personal view towards the paper is that it continue to have lacks in terms of sustainability elements, I also appreaciate your work on it. 

I could be more stricly. However, due to the modifications that you performed in the paper I am realistic. Therefore, I would encourage the acceptance on it. I really hope that this research work could continue afterwards giving more evidences under this challenging research field. 

All the best for your future research work

The Reviewer 

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestion.
Best wishes to you.

Reviewer 2 Report

No suggestions.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestion.
Best wishes to you.