Understanding blockchain technology for future supply chains: a systematic literature review and research agenda

By Yingli Wang, Jeong Hugh Han, Paul Beynon-Davies. Supply Chain Management, 2019

923 citations recorded by the source corpus.

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the way in which blockchain technology is likely to influence future supply chain practices and policies.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of both academic and practitioner literature was conducted. Multiple accounts of blockchain adoption within industry were also consulted to gain further insight.FindingsWhile blockchain technologies remain in their infancy, they are gaining momentum within supply chains, trust being the predominant factor driving their adoption. The value of such technologies for supply chain management lies in four areas: extended visibility and traceability, supply chain digitalisation and disintermediation, improved data security and smart contracts. Several challenges and gaps in understanding and opportunities for further research are identified by this research. How a blockchain-enabled supply chain should be configured has also been explored from a design perspective.Research limitations/implicationsThis systematic review focuses on the diffusion of blockchain technology within supply chains, and great care was taken in selecting search terms. However, the authors acknowledge that their choice of terms may have excluded certain blockchain articles from this review.Practical implicationsThis paper offers valuable insight for supply chain practitioners into how blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt existing supply chain provisions as well as a number of challenges to its successful diffusion.Social implicationsThe paper debates the poential social and economic impact brought by blockchain.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first studies to examine the current state of blockchain diffusion within supply chains. It lays a firm foundation for future research.

Subfields: Information Systems, Management Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bda7c563e52b78b1ee18e49a38b0a057a9394f47

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Citations in the corpus

Blockchain technology in supply chain operations: Applications, challenges and research opportunities (2020, neutral): “17 Wang et al. (2019a) It provides insights on the use of blockchain for SC and possible research directions.”
Future of industry 5.0 in society: human-centric solutions, challenges and prospective research areas (2022, background): “Customized software-connected factories, collaborative robotics, artificial intelligence, real-time information, and the internet of things must be adopted for industry 5.0 [50, 111–113].”
When Blockchain Meets Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review on Current Development and Potential Applications (2020, background): “Digitalization of physical properties and intelligence rights may be the next stage of development in blockchain application [19].”
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 and the circular economy: potential tensions and critical reflections from practice (2020, background): “High levels of transparency and traceability provided by blockchains can address a variety of issues in supply chains (Wang, Han, and Beynon-Davies 2019).”
Towards an economic geography of FinTech (2020, background): “According to Wang et al. (2019), blockchain technology is likely to shape future supply chain practices due to four key advantages: extended visibility and traceability, digitization and disintermediation, improved data security and smart contracts.”
Supply chain disruptions and resilience: a major review and future research agenda (2021, background): “This brings a new era in SCs and a remedy to fraudulent acts and security risks (Wang et al. 2019).”
Analysis of resilience strategies and ripple effect in blockchain-coordinated supply chains: An agent-based simulation study (2020, background): “Public and permissionless usually refer to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, while most proofs-of-concept in business have been deployed on private and per-missioned networks (Wang et al., 2019a).”
Blockchain in global supply chains and cross border trade: a critical synthesis of the state-of-the-art, challenges and opportunities (2019, background): “While Wang, Han, and Beynon-Davies (2018) and Cole, Stevenson, and Aitken (2019) reviewed the development of blockchain for SCM practitioners, Wang et al. (2019) further interviewed with SC experts to understand what senior executives expect from blockchain.”