Do Reputation Incentives Matter? Busy Directors and Corporate Social Responsibility in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to read this interesting manuscript. This study is at the interaction of two very important streams i.e. Directors business and CSR. The study found a nonlinear effect of director business on CSR. Please consider following observations that could help you to improve the current version.

Overall, The paper is well organized. The subject matter of this work is of relevance to the theme of the journal, which would be helpful in the context of analysis of overall literature contribution in the field. The title and abstract accurately reflect the content of the submission.

*.      The author needs to revised the literature section with new article (2022)

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.897444

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.841163
*       Method employed are sound but results need more explanation.
*       Please provide short explanation note of each table.

 
Overall, the manuscript is good written and adds in literature. I recommend Minor REVISIONS for publication after the author/s addressing the above queries and suggestions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This study could add an interesting angle to the literature that links 'busy directorship' and 'CSR', from the 'reputation' perspective. It is quite well-written: Concise and yet comprehensive. It has potentials. However, the authors need to improve in the following points.   

1) The study period is rather short and there is no defending why the authors limited the sample years to only 2016 to 2019. When short periods like this are used in a study, it should be because of the limitation from being some special datasets. But in this case, it is only CSMAR and RKS (and if RKS is limited, there should be alternatives for CSR scores for other sources). 

2)The choice of fixed-effects model to handle panel data following JF 2006 is understandable (in terms of why the authors did so). Unfortunately, in 2009, Petersen (in Review of Financial Studies) published an influential paper that criticizes that across the Financial Economics field. Thus, the authors should explore Petersen 2009 message and see how it applies to this particular study. The title of Petersen (2009) article is "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data sets: Comparing Approaches"

3) Please also check for 'Causality' issue for endogeneity thoroughly. 

4) There are also extra angles/dimensions worth exploring in the particular context of China. A classic example is 'State ownership'. At least one of angles like this should be added to the work to make it even more interesting.  

5) Minor: Please sort the reference list alphabetically (unless what the authors did follow 'Sustainability' style or something.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am surprised at how fast the authors can respond to points made. Points are taken on board well. Just perhaps a professional proofreading to edit everything before the formal publication. On reference, I still spot that it is not in alphabetical order. But I'll leave this to the editor and the publishing office. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf