The Supply Chain Has No Clothes: Technology Adoption of Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency

By Kristoffer Francisco, David Swanson. 2018

837 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Blockchain technology, popularized by Bitcoin cryptocurrency, is characterized as an open-source, decentralized, distributed database for storing transaction information. Rather than relying on centralized intermediaries (e.g., banks) this technology allows two parties to transact directly using duplicate, linked ledgers called blockchains. This makes transactions considerably more transparent than those provided by centralized systems. As a result, transactions are executed without relying on explicit trust [of a third party], but on the distributed trust based on the consensus of the network (i.e., other blockchain users). Applying this technology to improve supply chain transparency has many possibilities. Every product has a long and storied history. However, much of this history is presently obscured. Often, when negative practices are exposed, they quickly escalate to scandalous, and financially crippling proportions. There are many recent examples, such as the exposure of child labor upstream in the manufacturing process and the unethical use of rainforest resources. Blockchain may bring supply chain transparency to a new level, but presently academic and managerial adoption of blockchain technologies is limited by our understanding. To address this issue, this research uses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the concept of technology innovation adoption as a foundational framework for supply chain traceability. A conceptual model is developed and the research culminates with supply chain implications of blockchain that are inspired by theory and literature review.

Subfields: Information Systems, Information Systems and Management, Management Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b0058dba99b5f1a02d8ed29e2922b376d005f3b0

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Citations in the corpus

A supply chain transparency and sustainability technology appraisal model for blockchain technology (2019, background): “Many of these blockchain-led beneﬁcial outcomes and competitive advantage derive from supply chain transparency (Francisco and Swanson 2018; Tian 2016).”
Unearthing the determinants of Blockchain adoption in supply chain management (2020, background): “…et al. 2019) or been conducted from the TAM perspective (Kamble, Gunasekaran, and Arha 2019); or on singular aspects of SCM such as transparency (Francisco and Swanson 2018), trust (Heiskanen 2017), ripple effect (Ivanov, Dolgui, and Sokolov 2019), and traceability (Lu and Xu 2017) amidst…”
Blockchain for Supply Chain Traceability: Business Requirements and Critical Success Factors (2020, background): “Also, data structures may differ from one actor to another for different types of information exchanged between parties (Francisco and Swanson 2018).”
Blockchain Practices, Potentials, and Perspectives in Greening Supply Chains (2018, background): “…systems include: less time for LCA data collection; improved data quality; traceability of the data source; using actual data from suppliers, not from a generic source; and storing environmental information of a product through the end of life to better manage its recycling and disposal [18,36].”
A Survey on Blockchain Technology: Evolution, Architecture and Security (2021, background): “Supply chain management malpractices as well as obscurity of product history is also shown to beneﬁt from the trans-parency characteristic of Blockchain [30], [43] and [161].”
Evaluating the factors that influence blockchain adoption in the freight logistics industry (2020, background): “…be deployed in the freight logistics firms to ensure the efficiency of settlements between transacting parties throughout the supply chain by reducing borrowing costs by 75%, increasing liquidity by 25% and increasing profit margin by 2 to 4% (Dobrovnik et al, 2018; Francisco and Swanson, 2018).”
Blockchain technology: implications for operations and supply chain management (2019, background): “Blockchain technology has been hyped as a solution to the sub-supplier transparency problem in multi-tier supply networks (Francisco and Swanson, 2018), and to related issues like product counterfeiting (e.g. Toyoda et al., 2017; Kshetri, 2018).”
Blockchain adoption in operations and supply chain management: empirical evidence from an emerging economy (2020, background): “In SCM with BCT, it is expected that both effort expectancy and performance expectancy impact the behavioural intention to adopt BCT (Francisco and Swanson 2018).”
System architecture for blockchain based transparency of supply chain social sustainability (2020, background): “Overall, this application helps companies to optimize their supply chain configuration, lower the cost of production and logistics, and facilitate the improvement of SCSSM. • Supply chain transparency refers to information readily available to end-users and firms in a supply chain [62].”
Understanding the Blockchain technology adoption in supply chains-Indian context (2018, background): “Therefore, it is of utmost importance to analyze the factors which affect the acceptance of BT so that it helps to expedite the process of its adoption (Francisco and Swanson 2018).”