Blockchain and business ethics

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12259
• Author: Claus Dierksmeier,Peter Seele
• Date: 01 April 2020
• Published date: 01 April 2020

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  Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:348–359.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer

1 | INTRODUCTION

Since the incept ion of Bitcoin (Law, Sab ett and Solin as 1996;

Nakamoto, 2008), mainstream media has been treating this particular

cryptocurrency as tantamount to blockchain technology in general.

Yet, if blockchain technology was a planet, cryptocurrencies would

be only a small cont inent, with Bitcoin registeri ng as no more than a

single nation. T he media hype over Bitcoin a ppears thus invers ely pro-

portional to t he real impact to be expec ted from blockchain technol-

ogy at large. Th e same holds true for the adver se aspects of Bitcoin.

While it is true, f or example, tha t currently the mining of blockchai n

products consumes energy of around 47 terawatt-hours per year,

equal to the car bon footpring of “some 6.8 milli on average European

inhabitant s,” (Foteinis, 2018), high-energ y use is no necessary fe ature

of blockchain technology, although frequent in first-generation ap-

plications. Many second- and third-generation blockchains, however,

are so programm ed as to reduce or pre vent that proble m—or even

make a net positive con tribution to energ y conservatio n, as is the case

with “Solar Co in” (Dierksmeier & Seele , 2016).

Academic lite rature has accordingly begu n to look beyond cryp-

tocurrencies a nd turn its at tention toward bl ockchain techno logy

in general. The re is a plethora of w ork (for a recent over view see

Klarin, 2020 or Xu , Chen, & Kou, 2019) from the angle of i nformation

technology, computer science, and network theory. Less ample but

also fast growin g is the literatur e on juridical q uestions, on p oliti-

cal regulation , and on the indu strial governan ce of the technolo gy.

What lacks, th us far, are analyses from a bus iness ethics pers pective,

though; a gap we wish t o address in this paper.

After outlini ng the ethical u nfavorable an d favorable app lica-

tions, we introd uce three exemplary top ics demonstrating t he ethi-

cal ambivale nce of certain blockchai n applications: the rol e of trust,

job platforms , and the impact on priv acy and secrecy. These am biv-

alent cases are r ead against major ethic al theories and their co nsid-

eration culmin ates in two prac tical contributions: Firs t, a call for a

fast regulation, similar to the ongoing standardization and regula-

tion of corporate s ocial responsibility (C SR) standards; and seco nd,

Received: 15 Nove mber 2018 

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  Revised: 16 Novembe r 2019 

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  Accepted: 18 Novembe r 2019

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12259

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Blockchain and business ethics

Claus Dierksmeier1 | Peter Seele2

1Institute for Political Science, Universität

Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

2Ethics and Com munication Law Ce nter

(ECLC), Università della Svizzera italiana,

Lugano, Switzerland

Correspondence

Claus Dierksmeier, Institute for

Political Science, Universität Tübingen,

Melanchtho nstr. 36, Tübingen D-72074,

Germ any.

Email: claus.dierksmeier@uni-tuebingen.de

Abstract

This paper provides , from a business ethi cs perspec tive, a basic clusterin g of the

morally (a) favorable, (b) unfavorable, and (c) ambivalent dimensions of blockchain

technology and i ts various emer gent applications . Instead of proffer ing specific as-

sessments on par ticular aspects of b lockchain-based business mo dels, we aim to offer

an initial overview t hat charters the territory s o that future research can bring ab out

such moral assessm ents in an informed a nd orderly fashio n. The main contribu tion

of this paper lies in ident ifying several m orally ambivale nt dimensions of blockchai n

technology, which we fina lly link to two stra nds of business ethic s research: ethic al

and legal aspect s of legislation as well as a li nk to Habermasian corp orate social re-

sponsibility theory arguing for transparent data production and consumption on the

blockchain. We conclude th at future research is n ecessary for m oral assessment of

the ambivalent cas es, since their ethi cal evaluation chan ges depending on whe ther

one analyzes them t hrough the lenses of utilitar ianism, contractariani sm, deontology,

and virtue ethics, respectively.

For valuable f eedback and co nstructive c riticism, we wis h to thank the ano nymous

reviewers of o ur paper.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2019 The Authors . Business Ethics: A E uropean Review publ ished by John Wiley & So ns Ltd.