Potentials of blockchain technologies for supply chain collaboration: a conceptual framework

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-02-2020-0098
• Published date: 15 February 2021
• Date: 15 February 2021
• Pages: 973-994
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Abderahman Rejeb,John G. Keogh,Steven J. Simske,Thomas Stafford,Horst Treiblmaier

Potentials of blockchain

technologies for supply chain

collaboration:

a conceptual framework

Abderahman Rejeb

Sz

echenyi Istv

en University, Gy

or, Hungary

John G. Keogh

University of Reading, Greenlands, Henley-on-Thames, UK

Steven J. Simske

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Thomas Stafford

Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana, USA, and

Horst Treiblmaier

Modul University Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this study is to investigate the potentials of blockchain technologies (BC) for supply

chain collaboration (SCC).

Design/methodology/approach –Building on a narrative literature review and analysis of seminal SCC

research, BC characteristics are integrated into a conceptual framework consisting of seven key dimensions:

information sharing, resource sharing, decision synchronization, goal congruence, incentive alignment,

collaborative communication and joint knowledge creation. The relevance of each category is briefly assessed.

Findings –BC technologies can impact collaboration between transaction partners in modern supply chains

(SCs) by streamlining information sharing processes, by supporting decision and reward models and by

strengthening communicative relationships with SC partners. BC promises important future capabilities in SCs

by facilitating auditability, improving accountability, enhancing data and information transparency and

improving trust in B2B relationships. The technology also promises to strengthen collaboration and to

overcome vulnerabilities related to moral hazard and shortcomings found in legacy technologies.

Research limitations/implications –The paper is mainly focused on the potentials of BC technologies on

SCC as envisioned in the current academic literature. Hence, there is a need to validate the theoretical inferences

with other approaches such as expert interviews and empirical tests. This study is of use to practitioners and

decision-makers seeking to engage in BC-collaborative SC models.

Originality/value –The value of this paper lies in its call for an increased focus on the possibilities of BC

technologies to support SCC. This study also contributes to the literature by filling the knowledge gap of how

BC potentially impacts SC management.

Keywords Supply chain collaboration, Blockchain, Collaboration dimensions, Resource efficiency,

Transparency, Auditability, Accountability

Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction

Firms operating in globalized, multi-party supply chains (SCs) face increasing competitive

pressures driven by the accelerating pace of business (Connelly et al., 2013). These multi-

Blockchain and

supply chain

collaboration

973

Steven J. Simske’s work on this was partially supported by NSF EAGER grant with the abstract number

1842577, Advanced Analytics, Intelligence and Processes for Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply

Networks.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 16 February 2020

Revised 25 July 2020

9 October 2020

9 January 2021

18 January 2021

Accepted 25 January 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 32 No. 3, 2021

pp. 973-994

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-02-2020-0098

party SCs are often labeled as “virtual organizations”or “value chains.”In such virtual

organizational forms, multiple parties agree to collaborate in the generation of value, to share

in the risk of collaborating and to expect to receive positive outcomes in return (Ketchen and

Giunipero, 2004). To balance against the inherent complexities and risks of forming and

managing such complex global SCs, firms seek high levels of collaboration to leverage the

knowledge and resources of their exchange partners (Cao and Zhang, 2011).

As firms explore new and innovative business models, the notion of securing and assuring

value chain transaction details using blockchain technology (BC) has gained the attention of

researchers (Korpela et al., 2017;Kim and Laskowski, 2018), leading to perspectives that span

transaction trust to security and privacy threats that firms face in digital-enabledglobal value

chains (Dai and Vasarhelyi, 2017;Hong et al., 2014). Security and privacy features require

specific enhancement to ensure that business data are both safe and reliable and that services

are resilient against the many different forms of attacks likely to occur (Newman et al., 2016).

Managers strive for increased efficiency, reduced risk and improved responsiveness and

aim to achieve these qualities through the introduction of modern technologies to enhance

transparency and trust (Power et al., 2001;Wamba et al., 2020a,b). From this perspective, the

auditability characteristic of the BC environment serves to extend transactional trust beyond

the traditional understanding (which specifies that a cooperative partner will deliver on

promises under unknown circumstances). The BC enhancement of SC trust trust arises from

advantageous features such as automated deal execution, executional transparency and data

traceability among peers (Xia and Yongjun, 2017;Kamble et al., 2019).

Existing SC technologies already provide buyers with governance tools to monitor

supplier actions and behaviors in real-time. However, these tools provide only a modicum of

moral hazard risk reduction. Existing tools also provide transaction verification (Bergen et al.,

1992); but the traditional transaction management tools are from an era predating the present

network-enabled automated SCs that have emerged. Network-enabled SCs can now take

advantage of advantageous BC solutions for risk reduction and transaction verification.

BC represents a potent solution in the form of a new business model that can account for

and assure the veracity of digital SC transactions (Schmidt and Wagner, 2019). Previous

research has already demonstrated the feasibility of designing collaborative business

processes based on BC. Simulation models and surveys, both, have shown that BC is quite

effective in overcoming collaboration and trust issues in SCs; this can lead to beneficial effects

on SC performance by providing an effective solution for balancing information asymmetries

between partners (Longo et al., 2019;Wamba and Guthrie, 2020).

Firms interact primarily based on shared mutual interests (Kumar and Banerjee, 2012);

firms also face agency problems, which imply threats regarding opportunism and subsequent

moral hazard in business relationships (Bosse and Phillips, 2016). The protection of private

information in SCs is a research problem with multidisciplinary appeal for just this reason

(Hong et al., 2014). Trust between exchange partners remains a mission-critical requirement in

business-to-business B2B information sharing networks (Arnold et al., 2014) where current

implementations do not provide for the technological facilitation of trust between SC partners

(Lu et al., 2018). For this reason, prior and existing SC solutions are seen as vulnerable to

information assurance issues and security threats (Koh et al., 2014).

In this context, BC has the potential to take collaboration in SCs to a new trust level by

addressing SC information security problems (Treiblmaier, 2018) and subsequently gaining

consumer and investor confidence in the technology at the same time (Sodhi and Tang, 2019).

The functionality, pervasiveness and extent of the BC solution auger well for its application

beyond archetypical cryptocurrency use cases (Risius and Spohrer, 2017;Treiblmaier and

Beck, 2019), while at the same time providing much-needed information accounting,

information assurance, transaction verification and auditing capabilities for business

transactions (Kokina et al., 2017).

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