Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management

By Sara Saberi, Mahtab Kouhizadeh, Joseph Sarkis, L. Shen. International Journal of Production Research, 2018

3,158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Globalisation of supply chains makes their management and control more difficult. Blockchain technology, as a distributed digital ledger technology which ensures transparency, traceability, and security, is showing promise for easing some global supply chain management problems. In this paper, blockchain technology and smart contracts are critically examined with potential application to supply chain management. Local and global government, community, and consumer pressures to meet sustainability goals prompt us to further investigate how blockchain can address and aid supply chain sustainability. Part of this critical examination is how blockchains, a potentially disruptive technology that is early in its evolution, can overcome many potential barriers. Four blockchain technology adoption barriers categories are introduced; inter-organisational, intra-organisational, technical, and external barriers. True blockchain-led transformation of business and supply chain is still in progress and in its early stages; we propose future research propositions and directions that can provide insights into overcoming barriers and adoption of blockchain technology for supply chain management.

Subfields: Information Systems, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e82b8539af92b4af1f5c1c59dcce9d31dcefccc

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Citations in the corpus

Blockchain and the circular economy: potential tensions and critical reflections from practice (2020, background): “Although blockchains can increase transparency and address traceability issues in supply chains, it can share critical information that companies might be reluctant to share with other parties (Saberi et al. 2019).”
Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action (2022, background): “…emerging technologies on environmental sustainability: big data and predictive analytics capability (Dubey et al., 2019), blockchain technology (Saberi, Kouhizadeh, Sarkis, & Shen, 2019), AI (Nishant et al., 2020), and cloud computing enabled supply chain design (Shee, Miah, Fairfield, &…”
Blockchain applications in supply chains, transport and logistics: a systematic review of the literature (2019, background): “The implications of such applications to facilitate P2P energy (especially green energy) trading among supply chain tiers not only contributes to sustainable energy consumption in supply chains but also saves on energy and utility costs across supply chains (Saberi et al. 2019).”
Blockchain technology for enhancing swift-trust, collaboration and resilience within a humanitarian supply chain setting (2020, background): “Hence, BT is put forward as a technology that may change organisation cultures, supply chains and industries (Kewell, Adams, and Parry 2017; Min 2019; Zhu et al. 2019; Zhu and Kouhizadeh 2019; Saberi et al. 2019; Queiroz and Wamba 2019; Dolgui et al. 2019; Wang, Han, and Beynon-Davies 2019a, 2019b).”
Blockchain Practices, Potentials, and Perspectives in Greening Supply Chains (2018, background): “The research on blockchains, sustainability, and supply chains is in its infancy with the academic ﬁeld fertile for sowing ideas, theories, and analysis; many of which will grow [48].”
Evaluating the factors that influence blockchain adoption in the freight logistics industry (2020, background): “The blockchains differs from other digital innovations by four key characteristics including; decentralization, security, auditability and smart execution (Saberi et al, 2019).”
The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations (2021, background): “, vendor selection and evaluation); this work, however, is speculative at this stage, leading to researchers offering directions to further explore adoption of blockchain in this domain.(69) Threats The energy consumed by single cryptocurrency is equivalent to that of entire nations.”
When Blockchain Meets Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review on Current Development and Potential Applications (2020, background): “…review studies, this work synthesizes and analyzes research contributions from recent published literature to highlight that blockchain can reform the traditional paradigm of supply chain operations and develop a more sustainable environment for the overall supply chain ecosystem [129], [135].”
How Green FinTech Can Alleviate the Impact of Climate Change—The Case of Switzerland (2020, neutral): “[66] International Journal of Production Research Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management How blockchain technologies and smart contracts can be used to improve supply chain management.”
Blockchain in global supply chains and cross border trade: a critical synthesis of the state-of-the-art, challenges and opportunities (2019, background): “Saberi et al. (2018) focused on improving SC sustainability by blockchain.”
The adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in SMEs: results of an international study (2019, background): “Our study confirms that top management has a fundamental role in supporting such a changing scenario, because it is in charge of coordinating intra- and inter-firm communication among different actors (Saberi et al., 2019; Kiel et al., 2017).”
System architecture for blockchain based transparency of supply chain social sustainability (2020, background): “…layer operating on the top of internet protocols that enable economic transactions between business actors without relying on a third party [25], many researchers have tried to explore the impact of blockchain technology on supply chain management [18, 19], including supply chain coordination [38].”