Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management

TLDR

Globalisation and sustainability pressures make supply‑chain management increasingly complex, prompting interest in blockchain’s transparency, traceability, and security to address these challenges. The paper critically examines blockchain and smart contracts for supply‑chain management, exploring how the technology can overcome early‑stage adoption barriers. Four adoption‑barrier categories are introduced: inter‑organisational, intra‑organisational, technical, and external. The authors note that blockchain‑led transformation is still emerging and propose future research directions to overcome barriers and foster adoption.

Abstract

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.