Influence of Trust Relationships with Suppliers on Manufacturer Resilience in COVID-19 Era
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
An overall interesting paper that addresses the impact of trust relationship with suppliers on manufacturer resilience, as well as the information sharing mediating role on this relationship in COVID-19 pandemic context.
Originality: The paper contains new and significant information adequate to justify publication.
Relationship to Literature: The paper demonstrates an adequate understanding of the relevant literature in the field, however in line 249-205 “information sharing between members affects the operational performance of the supply chain [89].” referring to the crucial impact of information sharing with manufacturing firms on performance, more recent relevant surveys could be used in order to provide sound empirical support (on various KPIs/performance aspects), for example:
Trivellas P, Malindretos G, Reklitis P. Implications of Green Logistics Management on Sustainable Business and Supply Chain Performance: Evidence from a Survey in the Greek Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2020; 12(24):10515. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410515
Reklitis P, Sakas DP, Trivellas P, Tsoulfas GT. Performance Implications of Aligning Supply Chain Practices with Competitive Advantage: Empirical Evidence from the Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2021; 13(16):8734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168734
Methodology: Paper's argumentation is built on an appropriate base of theory and concepts. Nevertheless, it is not clear the scope, the methodology and the outcome of the interviews with experts from Chinese manufacturing companies.
Results: Results are presented clearly and analysed appropriately
Quality of Communication: English polishing is needed (minor errors).
For example:
Line 82: …there are few empirical studies have linking buyer-supplier trust…
Line 140: … not fully present the full extent….
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
We really appreciate the reviewer’s thorough review of the manuscript and provide constructive comments. We’ve revised the manuscript based on the valuable suggestions and added clarifications accordingly. We hope these revisions can alleviate the reviewer’s concerns.
Point 1: An overall interesting paper that addresses the impact of trust relationship with suppliers on manufacturer resilience, as well as the information sharing mediating role on this relationship in COVID-19 pandemic context.
Response 1: We appreicate the reviewer’s positive comment.
Point 2: Originality: The paper contains new and significant information adequate to justify publication.
Response 2: We thank the reviewer for the positive comment and this encourages us a lot.
Point 3: Relationship to Literature: The paper demonstrates an adequate understanding of the relevant literature in the field, however in line 249-205 “information sharing between members affects the operational performance of the supply chain [89].” referring to the crucial impact of information sharing with manufacturing firms on performance, more recent relevant surveys could be used in order to provide sound empirical support (on various KPIs/performance aspects), for example:
Trivellas P, Malindretos G, Reklitis P. Implications of Green Logistics Management on Sustainable Business and Supply Chain Performance: Evidence from a Survey in the Greek Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2020; 12(24):10515. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410515
Reklitis P, Sakas DP, Trivellas P, Tsoulfas GT. Performance Implications of Aligning Supply Chain Practices with Competitive Advantage: Empirical Evidence from the Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2021; 13(16):8734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168734
Response 3: We appreciate the thorough review and great suggestions of more recent literature.
We’ve carefully reviewed the literature and found them strongly supporting our arguments. We now added the literature in our literature review section (please see P6 L273-275).
“Scholars found that strong relationships and high information sharing levels between supply chain companies and suppliers can contribute to their profitability and competitiveness [90, 91].”
References:
- Trivellas P, Malindretos G, Reklitis P. Implications of Green Logistics Management on Sustainable Business and Supply Chain Performance: Evidence from a Survey in the Greek Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2020,12,24,10515. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410515
- Reklitis P, Sakas DP, Trivellas P, Tsoulfas GT. Performance Implications of Aligning Supply Chain Practices with Competitive Advantage: Empirical Evidence from the Agri-Food Sector. Sustainability. 2021,13,6,8734. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168734
Point 4: Methodology: Paper’s argumentation is built on an appropriate base of theory and concepts. Nevertheless, it is not clear the scope, the methodology and the outcome of the interviews with experts from Chinese manufacturing companies.
Response 4: We thank the reviewer for raising this issue with our scope, methodology and outcome of the interviews. We now added more clarification about the interview in the Methodology section (please see P9 L382-395).
“Before the questionnaires were distributed, we visited manufacturing companies several times in order to understand the real situation of the manufacturing companies. We invited managers of the manufacturing companies and scholars from universities to check the content of the questionnaires to ensure that the questions were clear, appropriate, and understandable. The experts attended regular meetings of steel manufacturing companies with purchasing managers, operation supervisors, and head of quality control departments. In addition, we conducted one-on-one interviews with managers of manufacturing companies such as food and pharmaceutical companies. We found that in the current Chinese manufacturing companies, trust relationships with suppliers do affect the ability of companies facing supply disruptions. Last but not least, the quesetions accounted for the operational practices of manufacturing companies reflected the current state of manufacturing companies, and the contents can be used in the risk management practices of other manufacturing companies. The experts’ reviews make the scales obtained form the literature more relevant and practically meaningful.”
Point 5: Quality of communication: English polishing is needed (minor errors).
For example:
Line 82: … there are few empirical studies have linking buyer-supplier trust …
Line 140: … not fully present the full extent …
Response 5: We thank the reviewer for the thorough review. We did further proof reading of the manuscript. We also reached out to the MDPI language editing services provided by Sustainability to polish the article, which helped us with additional checks on the grammar, spelling, punctuations, and phrasing of the paper to further improve its readability.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The Research Paper needs the following revisions and is Subject for re-review, and after re-review, the final decision for the paper will be done:
1. Add in the last lines of abstract what experimental results or conclusions are there in the manuscript.
2. Before organization of paper, add Objectives of the paper.
3. At the end of Literature review, highlight in 9-15 lines what overall technical gaps are observed that led to the design of proposed methodology.
4. Add the Algorithm and Flowchart of the proposed technique.
5. Add Case study based discussion to the paper.
Author Response
We appreciate the constructive comments and suggestions from the reviewer, which evidently improved the manuscript. We’ve carefully revised our manuscript and hope the revisions can alleviate the reviewer’s concern.
Point 1: Add in the last lines of abstract what experimental results or conclusions are there in the manuscript.
Response 1: We thank the reviewer for the thorough review and raising this point. We now added the experimental results and conclusions in the abstract (please see P1 L20-25).
“The results reveal that the trust relationship with suppliers has significant positive impacts on three dimensions of manufacturer resilience, that is, preparedness, responsiveness, and recovery capability. In addition, the information sharing level partially mediates the impact of the trust relationship with suppliers on manufacturer resilience. Specifically, the information sharing level positively affects preparedness, responsiveness, and recovery capability. Moreover, the trust relationship with suppliers facilitate the information sharing level.”
Point 2: Before organization of paper, add Objectives of the paper.
Response 2: We thank the reviewer for the comment. We now added the objectives of the paper in the Introduction section before the organization of paper (please see P3 L126-136).
“This study aims to achieve the following objectives. First, this study aims to integrate the exiting supply chain resilience literature and interdisciplinary knowledge to obtain appropriate manufacturer resilience dimensions, as well as specific contents of each dimension. Second, the purpose is to reveal the impact of trust relationships with suppliers on manufacturer resilience at different stages and furnish multidimensional insights for each activity of manufacturer resilience. Furthermore, the research aims to examine the role of information sharing level on manufacturer resilience and how it mediates between trust relationships with suppliers and different stages of resilience. Overall, the goal is to address the issues of firm stability and sustainable production by implementing an innovative model of trust relationships with suppliers and manufacturer resilience, which is a novel perspective.”
Point 3: At the end of Literature review, highlight in 9-15 lines what overall technical gaps are observed that led to the design of proposed methodology.
Response 3: We thank the reviewer for raising this issue. We now added the gaps in the current research techniques, such as the research type, limitations of research methodology, study sample, and the composition of scales, in the literature review section (please see P7 L334-347).
“We found that the pandemic related policies are relatively strict and specifically design for particular situation so that more emppirical research are needed to understand more recent situation of the enterprises. This will provide insights for companies to develop special managemnt policies in the context of the pandemic. We noticed there are very few questionnaire studies and there is a lack of empirical methods. In addition, previous studies focused more on the entire supply chain [1] while lacking research with manufacturing firms as research subjects. To brige this gap in research, this paper specifically targets manufacturing firms, which would not only enrich the literature on manufacturer resilience, but to provide better management suggestions for the firms as well. Moreover, the scales used in the study extend the current litearture on manufacturer resilience measure, which requires integration of the exisiting literature and the adaptation of the scale in combination with interviews with company managers. Based on the theoretical and technical gaps reviewed above, we desigend the curent study.”
Point 4: Add the Algorithm and Flowchart of the proposed technique.
Response 4: We thank the reviewer for the comment. We added a flowchart describing the main research method to clarify the design of our research (please see P8 Figure2).
Point 5: Add Case study based discussion to the paper.
Response 5: We thank the reviewer for the suggestion. We now added case study example in our Discussion section to better support our conclusions (please see P18 L596-601 and L612-627).
“While previous articles have studied resilience in the context of supply chains [1,2,5], this paper differs in that it focuses specifically on the manufacturer segment of the supply chain. In our case, the area of study is more microscopic. Furthermore, while existing trust studies focus on the entire supply chain [59,60,69], this study focuses specifically on trust between the manufacturers and suppliers.”
“The above findings are consistent with the observations in our interviews with the manufacturing companies. For example, during our interviews with a food manufacturing company, the manager highlighted that the lockdown policy during the pandemic caused delays in the supply of raw materials from some suppliers. Only suppliers from areas that were not under lockdown could provide raw materials on time. Therefore, the manufacturer had to spent more time and look for suppliers from such areas. The manufacturer and the new suppliers built their relationship based on trust, which they believe that none of the party would act opportunistically for financial gain, and they shared in-formation about inventory, production capacity, and product quality honestly. The manufacturer trusted the supplier to provide qualified raw materials, so the manufacturer could promptly adjust production schedules and contingency plans to ensure uninterrupted production. Therefore, this study presents the actual situation of manufacturing companies in China. The strict pandemic policies and the large number of Chinese manufacturing firms make the case unique. Previous research on firm resilience has not been conducted empirically in the context of ongoing emergencies at a particular time, such as the COVID-19 pandemic in our case [9].”
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
