Stakeholder Perspectives on Supply Chain Risks: The Case of Indonesian Palm Oil Industry in West Papua

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigates supply chain risks from stakeholders' perspectives, and a West Papua case study for a related topic exists. 

The topic is interesting, and the paper is well-prepared. The literature is quite well. The references are appropriate. The abstract and the introduction parts are fine.

 

1) There are some minor typos/grammar errors. The language could be improved slightly.

2) The proposed data could be supported with one or two graphics.

3) Part numbers 5.1, 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 could be revised. The risks could be explained better.

1) There are some minor typos/grammar errors. The language could be improved slightly.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The overall work is interesting and seriously developed, demonstrating a fair attempt to proceed to  a qualitative research. The content is dense and exploitable. The theme of the research is valuable and requires attention. But there are several major issues in this paper which should be fixed prior to any publication. One of these major issue is the way the paper is organized: it mixes the details about the case and the theoretical development of the arguments to justify the RQ. Further explanations are given below. The second issue is related to the development of the research question. The case study is intended primarily to explore, to extend theory or to gain understanding, it requires an explicit, up-front statement of its intentions. While researchers conducting an exploratory study may not be able to say initially what they might find, the basic research question must be clearly kept in mind (Stuart et al., 2002). Here the RQ is unclear and the unit of analysis neither. A third weakness resides in the way the findings are represented. Please find further details of this problem below.

Introduction.

There is a major issue here. Authors use the concepts straightforward, without defining them (“stakeholders”, “SC risks”…). The introduction is not written like a typical introduction because most of the text of the intro refers to the case description (palm oil, palm oil supply chain). I would highly recommend to move all the details about the case (palm oil industry, etc…) from the introduction to the methodology section. Indeed, the description of the case is part of the explanation about the data collected. All these details about the case are interesting, and should be moved in the methodology section, because Authors have to demonstrate why the case is exemplar, eg why they chose that particular case to investigate the research question. Thus, all sentences related to demonstrating why the case is interesting in that study should be moved down to the methodology section (all lines from 37/38 to 89 have to be moved to the methodology).

How should be designed the introduction? the introduction should introduce and precisely define terms, like “stakeholders perspective”, “SC risks”, should describe the unit of analysis, and introduce the debate/the literature gap/the research question, so that the reader can understand what the paper is about. Also, it should present which of the three different methodological approaches to case research has been chosen (theory generation, theory testing, and theory elaboration). The academic development of case studies has to stick to specific rules, and I encourage the authors to read seminal literature about case study elaboration. Please read Ketokivi at al. (2014) for further details.

The second major issue is related to the theoretical development of the paper. Developping a case requires a specific process. You have to follow a structured method to develop your case (read for instance Stuart et al. (2002)).  Here, the research question is not well defined. “Yin (1989) suggests case studies are particularly appropriate when the research question centers on “why” observed phenomena occur, when there is no control over behavioral events, and when the focus is on contemporary events.”. We understand that you want to investigate key stakeholder perspectives on the supply chain risks (what means perspective ? It can refer to impact or influence. What kind of link between stakeholders and SC risks do you want to investigate? Do you want to study the managerial impliocation of stakeholders ? ?The flow of communication ?). We do not know the unit of analysis (the complete SC ? a partial SC ? a focus on informations ? on goods ? on both ? etc.). The theoretical development should mention a field of research in wich the paper is grounded. Here, we hardly understand which field is concerned (can be SCM, OM, RSCM, GSCM, etc.). So, overall the research question is unclear, neither is the unit of analysis. That has to be fixed from the introduction onwards.

The literature review.

The title uses terms like “stakeholders” and “SC risks”. The literature review should review the current literature about these topics, and must discusses the debate around them, the linkages. Explain who are the stakeholders (you cite internal, external + network but after you loose this classification and replace it with smallholder farmers, cooperative, sNGOs, etc..  Be consistent, otherwise the reader is lost). Describe the SC risks, and bridge the two constructs (= 3 sections in the literature review). These 3 sections should not include details about the case, nor discuss palm oil. For instance, section 2.2 mixes again several concepts + the case itself. It should be renamed. “Palm oil SC risks” is not relevant. Instead, I would recommend the following structure of the LR:

·        2.1/ SC stakeholders

·        2.2/ SC risks

·        2.3/ SC internal, external and network risks

·        2.4/…

 

Among other things, you should take the opportunity of the literature review to explain what is a supply chain. Your Figure 1 represents the palm oil supply chain (which is fine, when talking about findings). But it comes from nowhere, because the biscu feature of a supply chain and its stakeholders has not be presented before.

Methodology :

Apart of the issues reported above , the methodology is well developed. A few details can be raised.  Creswell and Creswell (2018) is not a seminal paper to cite in the methodology section. Yin (2016) is more typical but has some specific angle to treat the case studies. For instance, commonly used are Eisenhardt’s (1989) comments on the use of case studies in situations in which there is little previous literature or prior empirical evidence about a phenomenon and Yin’s (1989) arguments that the appropriate methodology depends on the current state of knowledge and the nature of the research problem. Thus, clarify your research philosophy and cite the relevant authors.

In the methodology, you have to explain who are the stakeholders (table 4), following the previous classification “internal/external/network”. Indeed, you introduced this classification in the LR, so it should serve a better understanding of the unit of analysis. Your table 4 is not consistent whith what has been done before (thus the reader is lost and doubt about the nature of the stakeholders under focus).

Findings:

Findings section has a major weakness, too. It does not report on the results of the interviews. It summarizes the findings in a form of a table, with no prior justification. There is one problem, , with simply reducing the massive amount of data to charts and tables; it becomes difficult to convince the reader that each item in the table (or other visual) properly represents the raw data. The only practical solution is to include in the paper a demonstration of the chain of evidence (from raw data to summary) for a portion of the overall data and then attempt to convince the reader that the rest of the data were handled similarly. For example, one might map out the complete chain of evidence for only a few categories within a few cases, to demonstrate how a table was developed for all categories and cases (Stuart et al., 2002).

Why the OEMs are not represented in table 5 (I mean: the buyers of the palm oil, big manufacturers belonging to the agro-food sector) ? They should be part of the list of stakeholder, otherwise your SC is not complete (we can exclude the end consumer, as I understand the paper is focused on operations management, not B2C marketing).

Figure 1: it is complex. A first look makes us realize that we don’t know what are PE / FPS / IS.

There are 32 risks listed in Figure 1. Where do they come from ? Table 3 does not represent 32 risks. Be consistent in the way you develop the paper.

 

Minor details:

Avoid giving your point of view in the intro or in the literature review. Academic work is essentially made of reviewing others’ work. Example: avoid saying “The authors state that …”. Instead, keep the argument and cite a paper already published.

Table 1 is interesting in itself, but we don’t understand why the two types of stakeholders are considered in the context of SC risks. This must be explained before (in the introduction for instance).

2.1.2 is also about the case, so move it down. That section can be part of the first lines of the findings, because it refers to contextual data analysis.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Introduction:

·         The problem needs to be clearly defined

Literature review

·         The previous research gaps should be discussed

·         what gaps this study will cover

Methodology

·         Research methodology is suitable in this section and well organized.

·          

Results & Discussion

·         These parts are appropriate and clearly illustrates aspects of the study

Conclusion:

·         The contribution of the research should be clarified

·         What are the target group/ audience

·         Further recommendations for future research are required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript was written very well and has an excellent opportunity to publish in this great journal. 

All sections of the manuscript are structured very well. I only suggest adding brief explanations about the research gap or a summary of the literature review after Table 3.

Also, please check carefully the context to revise some typographical mistakes. For example, the "organisation" in the abstract must be changed to "organization".

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the word done in the revised version. I must admit that the paper is now better structured and has a potential to be published in Sustainability. In particular, I liked the way you have developped your arguments in the methodology, justifying the case you've chosen.

However, I would advise you to make minor changes, to further increase the impact and the sharpness of the text.

- Introduction includes now many strong arguments to justify the paper. However, it is dense and you could increase the sharpness by reducing the length. For instance, work on the way your paragraphs are designed: start with a punchy sentence, then develop 2 or 3 arguments, and close with a transition to the next paragraph. This way of writing paragraphs in an intrioduction is sharp and increases the impact on the reader, capturing its attention.

- tables : careful with the design of the tables: we can hardly bridge columns with authors (example Table 1). You should keep in-between lines, to improve the clarity of the tables.

- End of the literature review: you should add a transition to introduce your research questions, your literature gap (or the debate and the gap you'd like to fill in). Because in current version, the LR ends with no transition to the methodology.

- Table 4 can be moved down to appendix.

- Ther findings and the discussion could focus more on stakeholders in their headlines, instead of risks. Because it is a "stakeholder perspective".

 

 

Good

Author Response

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