1.
INTRODUCTION
The emergence of the Industry 4.0
paradigm (Agarwal et al., 2021; Calabrese et al., 2020; Gamoura, 2021; Ivanov &
Dolgui, 2020) has resulted in numerous improvements and innovations for
organizations in various sectors. Although unique changes to the global
scenario were brought by each industrial revolution, the speed at which the
fourth revolution is affecting the businesses is unprecedented (Anand et al.,
2021; Li et al., 2020a; Su et al., 2020). This revolution is induced by
advanced digital technologies that empower companies to deploy data-driven
strategies and develop data-processing capabilities (Li et al., 2020b). Among
these technologies, Blockchain is a prominent innovation that is remodeling
traditional business models and creating opportunities for improvement of
transparency, trust, and for costs' reduction (Kshteri, 2018). Blockchain
refers to “a fully distributed system for cryptographically capturing and
storing a consistent, immutable, linear event log of transactions between
networked actors” (Risius & Spohrer, 2017, p.2). This technology is
particularly perceived as a solution for traceability problems in supply chain
management (Lu & Xu, 2017) and a way to establish trustworthy and close
relationships across the entire Supply Chain (SC) including
intra-organizational units, suppliers and customers (Aste et al., 2017).
Indeed, Blockchain’s traceability mechanisms have the potential of preventing
transactions' fraud and offer security, authenticity and legitimacy features
that are crucial to supply chains (Wong et al., 2020). Also, a
Blockchain-enabled smart contract induces high levels of efficiency to supply
chain management along with decentralized operations (Kopyto et al., 2020).
Finally, this technology can allow customers to check the goods’ journey across
the chain, therefore enhancing their trust (Quieroz & Fosso Wamba, 2019).
Aware of these benefits of Blockchain
adoption in SC, many organizations around the globe are conducting pilot
projects in order to experiment this technology and grasp its real potential.
For instance, in collaboration with IBM, the Danish shipping company Maersk
tested Blockchain for international logistics in order to track its shipping
containers worldwide based on attributes of temperature, GPS location, etc.
(Yang, 2017). Alibaba partnered with Blackmores, AusPost, and PwC to explore
Blockchain use for fighting food fraud, involving the selling of lower-quality
foods usually with counterfeit ingredients (Sachdev, 2019). Blockchain startup
Chronicled and LinkLab consultancy firm are working on a track and trace pilot
addressing the pharmaceutical industry, with the aim to satisfy the Drug Supply
Chain Security Act (Kshteri, 2018). The application of Blockchain in SC is
hence still at its initial stages and is marked with the increasing emergence
of such pilot projects that are crucial to resolve technical issues of Blockchain
in this inter-organizational context. In addition to improving Blockchain
features and adapting its use to SC, practitioners must also be aware of the
critical success factors (CSFs) for this technology adoption in order to be
cognitively and structurally prepared for its imminent maturity and its certain
impact on business models and power relationships in SC (Biswas et al., 2017).
However, while the pilot projects and most academic studies have intensively
examined the functional and technical peculiarities of Blockchain in SC (Behnke
& Janssen, 2020), no empirical or theoretical research has accurately
characterized the contingent factors fostering its adoption in SC. Few factors
have been identified in empirical studies or in prior theoretical research that
investigated the trends and projections of Blockchain use in SC (e.g. Kopyto et
al., 2020; Varriale et al., 2021). The question of how managers can make sure
Blockchain adds value to their SCs and broadly to their organizations is still
unanswered (Fosso Wamba & Quieroz, 2020).
Hence, the present study aims at
covering this gap by characterizing the different CSFs that should be carefully
managed to reap the benefits of Blockchain in SC and to enable managers
overcome its operational and relational challenges. Moreover, given that
success factors of a technology adoption are interdependent (Pankratz &
Basten, 2018), our study proposes to identify potential relationships between
the different categories of CSFs, thus opening-up the perspectives for future
empirical research. Accordingly, we raise the following research question: What
are the inter-related critical success factors for Blockchain adoption in
Supply Chain? To answer this question, we performed a Systematic Literature
Review (SLR) that synthesizes the current academic knowledge on the CSFs for
Blockchain adoption in SC. In contrast to the majority of SLR studies on
Blockchain use in SC that aim at describing the global trends of this stream,
our study stands out by focusing on the specific issue of CSFs for this technology
adoption in SC and by striving to provide theoretical inferences explaining the
natures of the factors and their potential ties. To conduct this explanatory
SLR, we relied on two complementary approaches. First, a thematic analysis
supported by NVivo enabled identifying and conceptually categorizing the
factors proposed in a dataset of 56 articles selected for the SLR. Then, a
social network analysis using VOSviewer resulted in delineating extant research
in our topic under investigation and in explaining the links between the
identified factors. To further emphasize the theoretical implications of this
research, we analyzed our results in light of an existing theory to deconstruct
the studied phenomenon as recommended for SLR studies aimed at explaining rather
than at describing (Rowe, 2014). In this respect, we relied on the TOE
(Technology, Organization, Environment) model (Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1990)
often used for examining adoption in intra and inter-organizational contexts,
in order to propose hypotheses explaining the inter-related mechanisms by which
the identified CSFs impact Blockchain adoption in SC.
Thus, this study contributes to the
advancement of academic knowledge and managerial practice. From a theoretical
standpoint, we uncover the diverse natures of the CSFs for Blockchain adoption
in SC and offer accurate description and conceptual categorization of these
factors. This study also proposes an operationalization of the TOE dimensions
considering the peculiarities of this technology and of this adoption context,
and unveils potential direct and mediated links among the CSFs composing the
dimensions. Accordingly, we provide opportunities for further research to
enrich the factors, evaluate their criticality and their different contributions
to the SC performance, and empirically explore their ties identified in this
study. From a practical standpoint, we raise managers' awareness of the key
organizational, technological and external factors that would foster the
success of Blockchain adoption for SC in their organizations. This research
particularly spurs managers to rethink their project management practices,
organizational capabilities, and relationships with the SC stakeholders and
with the broad industrial community in order to be prepared for this digital
era with Blockchain rapidly gaining ground.
This article is structured as follows.
Section 2 is devoted to our theoretical foundations while Section 3 describes
our research methodology. The findings are detailed in Section 4 and are further
discussed in Section 5. Finally, this study concludes with its implications and
future research avenues.
2. Theoretical foundations
2.1 Basics of Blockchain technology
Blockchain technology is a distributed
database of records or shared public/private ledgers of all digital
transactions that have been executed and shared among Blockchain participating
agents (Crosby et al., 2016; Saberi et al., 2019). A main difference between
the present Internet design and that of Blockchain is the fact that
transactions in the Internet aim to move information, i.e. not value, and to
move copies but not original information. Blockchain is additionally distinct
from the most existing designs of information systems thanks to four key
properties that provide a time-stamped and verifiable record of transactions
(English et al., 2016): auditability, non-localization (decentralization),
security, and smart execution (Baker & Steiner, 2015).
In fact, when a new transaction is
created by an agent, it is broadcasted to the network for auditing and
verification. Once the majority of the chain’s nodes approve this transaction
based on pre-specified consensus rules, this transaction is added to the chain
as a new block associated with a generated cryptographic hash. Each block holds
not only records of the transaction but also includes the hash of the preceding
block. This creates a block interdependency resulting in a chain, that is the
Blockchain (Hackius & Petersen, 2017). Multiple copies of the transaction
are created in a decentralized manner and saved in distributed nodes,
hence enabling the participants to access verified records for every
transaction (Crosby et al., 2016). This decentralization also fosters security
as it makes Blockchains less susceptible to crashing, corruption or hacking
(Tian, 2016). Indeed, altering a transaction would require altering the records
on the devices of most networks’ members, and also altering the cryptographic
hash associated with every block within the chain (Hackius & Petersen,
2017). Meanwhile, a smart contract allows the performance of credible
transactions without third parties’ involvement, which helps establishing
trust, accountability, and transparency among the agents (Kopyto et al., 2020).
A smart contract is a software program that stores policies and rules for
consensual actions and terms between a network parties (Delmolino et al.,
2016). The contract automatically executes its code each time it receives a
message from a network actor or another contract, and updates the registers
accordingly if the contractual conditions of its network are met (Peters &
Panayi, 2016).
Blockchains can therefore be used to
implement an agreed set of rules that no one can break neither the users nor
the system operators. They rely on a unique architecture platform for
applications involving multiple parties who require little trust in each other,
as is the case of fragmented supply chains (Nofer et al., 2017). This
technology guarantees the system integrity in the face of idleness or
dishonesty. Participants are able to view the ledgers and analyze records that
are kept behind cryptography (Crosby et al., 2016), thus simultaneously
ensuring transparency and anonymity (Tian, 2016). Depending on the Blockchain
application, its design can form public (without authorization) or private
(with authorization) networks and ledgers (Ølnes et al., 2017), which differ in
terms of network actors and consensus rules. In a private or closed Blockchain,
the parties know each other and there is no anonymity. In this case, there
would be new roles such as certifiers, who provide certifications to network
participants and keep the network private. In a public or open blockchain, to
maintain trust with several anonymous users, cryptographic methods are used to
allow users to enter the network and record their transactions (Pilkington,
2016).
2.2 Blockchain adoption in SC
Technology adoption refers to the
decision to accept and use a new technology in order to reach performance
purposes (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008). Blockchain was first adopted in the
financial sector as a platform to manage the Bitcoin digital cryptocurrency
(Nakamoto, 2008). Aside from the digital currency, Blockchain is a cutting-edge
computing paradigm with wide opportunities and challenges for the supply chain
(SC) field (Abeyratne & Monfared, 2016; Tian, 2016). SC “consists of the
series of activities and organisations that materials move through on their
journey from initial suppliers to final customers” (Waters, 2019, p.7). Most
important SC tasks are sourcing, production, new product development,
logistics, coordination, integration and demand management (Jokar et al., 2002;
Vitasak, 2013), which aim at enhancing customer value and achieving a sustained
competitive advantage (Handfield & Nichols, 2002). The decentralization,
auditability and smart-contract enabled features of Blockchain result on its
high potential for reshaping business models and improving processes in SC.
Hence, this technology's application started attracting SC practitioners and
scholars since 2016 (Tian, 2016). We hereby list the major implementation
domains of Blockchain in SC.
First, this technology is widely used
for traceability and visibility enhancements (Dujak & Sajter, 2019). It
enables the verification of a product origin in terms of time, place and
manufacturers, and offers information regarding its route from suppliers all
the way to consumers. Providing such information is highly valuable for
customers and represents a real competitive advantage for the company (Hastig &
Sodhi, 2020). This application of Blockchain is particularly beneficial for
retailers in fast moving consumer goods and food industries, who are compelled
to inform their customers regarding the products’ traceability (Fabbe-Costes
& Lemaire, 2001) but hardly ever have full knowledge of the SC upstream
part (George et al., 2019). Information about food journey may additionally
help SC members better prepare shipment delivery, which results in shorter
lead-time to consumers and faster operations. Furthermore, consumers are more
confident regarding this product and benefit from more time to enjoy its
consumption.
Second, Blockchain greatly helps
improving demand forecasting in SCs (Kouhizadeh et al., 2021). The latter
refers to the preparation by SC members for upcoming events in the SC based on
coordinated efforts for forecasting expected demand, hence jointly influencing
demand and creating their supply (Dujak el al., 2017). All the upstream members
should create their own demand considering the data of the independent demand,
that is the product amount demanded by the SC end-use customers described in
terms of location and time (Mentzer et al., 2007). This collaborative demand
management allows avoiding a bullwhip effect (Lee et al., 1997) characterized
with additional safety stocks on each upstream echelon of the SC that
financially burden the chain and slow the material flow. The main prerequisite
for this common demand forecast is the exchange of data on independent demand
between all SC members; whereas the crucial problem and major barrier of supply
networks is the lack of trust for information exchange between SC actors. In
this respect, complete security and transparency guaranteed by Blockchain helps
overcoming these issues by supporting trustworthy, secure, immutable and
real-time exchange of information regarding the independent demand that is
required for demand forecasting in the supply network (Kopyto et al., 2020).
Additionally, final customers may connect to a Blockchain-based application,
and therefore become true members of SC with the possibility to express their
needs and opinions directly. These real-time feedbacks would enable more
accurate forecasting, and entirely change retail and production landscape.
Third, Blockchain provides open access
to information that could be available to everyone or just to specific members
of the SC depending on the type of Blockchain (Helliar et al., 2020). The
benefits of this open access are mainly recognized for transportation. For
example, IBM and Maersk developed cargo tracking Blockchain-based applications
that provided data on containers to relevant parties (SC members, banks, and
insurance companies) and created a digitized documented work flow throughout
the freight journey (IBM, 2018). This helped reducing costs of insurance,
decreasing the need for numerous communications between connected organizations
during which many error, spoilage, waste and defects happen, and optimizing the
use of empty containers through broader access to their availability on nearby
ports and ships (Del Castillo, 2017). Besides, open access granted by
Blockchain can contribute to establishing a more environmental-friendly
behavior of consumers and companies. It decreases the need for paper form
documentation and online communications and transactions. It also provides
trustless information about products' lifecycle of use, which would enable more
efficient re-manufacturing, recycling and leasing of existing products
(Herzberg, 2015). Finally, it traces products’ carbon footprints, hence allowing
for giving appreciation to ecologically performing companies and products, and
penalizing the opposing ones.
Fourth, Blockchain helps decreasing
fraud risk and counterfeit thanks to its verification of authenticity and open
access applications (Kshteri, 2018). For example, the pharmaceutical market is
the world’s largest fraud market with sales of counterfeit medicines ranging
from 163 billion to 217 billion US dollars per year (Dujak & Sajter, 2019).
Hence, pharmaceutical serialization (prescription drug labelling system for
authentication through SC from manufacturer to consumer) is becoming compulsory
in most developed countries. Using Blockchain as distributed ledger with
records of drugs and their origin streamlines serialization and significantly reduces
this fraud. Similarly, the need to prevent counterfeit is frequently expressed
in the luxury jewelry industry. For instance, Everledger is a company that is
striving to make the diamond SC more transparent thanks to Blockchain (Hackius &
Petersen, 2017). It digitally secures records about diamonds' forty metadata
points (e.g. color, carats, serial number, the cut, etc.) by using linkages to
the laser inscription on the girdle of the stone. The company has uploaded 1.6
million diamonds on a Blockchain platform (Roberts, 2017). Its services are
mainly used by insurance companies, open market places and banks to
authenticate the transaction process. Aside of these two sectors, the need to
prevent counterfeit is becoming critical with the increased availability of
technologies for additive manufacturing that allow anyone to manufacture
product parts of questionable quality. Blockchain is therefore an appropriate
means to help end users and producers verify quality and authenticity (Holland
et al., 2017).
In sum, Blockchain possesses an
enormous potential to optimize SC processes, improve performance and reshape
supply business models. However, the adoption of this technology in SC is still
nascent, as it requires overcoming complex challenges in terms of throughput,
latency (Wang et al., 2019), energy consumption to perform the transactions
(Babich & Hilary, 2020), decentralization of power, and alignment of
consensus rules between the SC actors (Fosso Wamba et al., 2020). To handle
these challenges, many public and private firms as well as industrial
associations are conducting pilot projects, in collaboration with Blockchain
labs in most prestigious universities worldwide (Dujak & Sajter, 2019).
Hence, SC managers need to prepare for the imminent maturity of Blockchain and
anticipate its radical transformational impact by establishing the right
organizational context and managerial practices to accompany its adoption
(Fosso Wamba & Quieroz, 2020). In this respect, through a systematic
literature review, the present research provides a refined analysis of the
inter-related critical success factors (CSFs) that affect the adoption of
Blockchain in SC as explained hereafter.
3. Research methodology
This research aims at characterizing
the interdependent critical success factors (CSFs) for Blockchain adoption in
Supply Chain (SC). CSFs can be defined as characteristics, factors, conditions,
or variables that must go right for achieving successful results (Zhou et al.,
2011). These factors need to be carefully managed, maintained, and controlled
for the expected performance outcomes (Leidecker & Bruno, 1984). To answer
our research question, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) by
following the recommendations of Kitchenham (2004) to extract the relevant
academic content, analyze it and report its results. In contrast to descriptive
literature reviews intending to map extant knowledge on a topic under general
categories without discussing their underlying theoretical assumptions (Rowe,
2014), the present study has explanatory purposes. In fact, we aspire to
delineate extant research in these factors in order to propose theoretical
implications explaining their natures and their potential links (Borgatti et
al., 2002). We detail hereafter our approach to scan the literature associated
with our research question and analyze its insights.
3.1 Material collection for the SLR
To identify
studies that examined CSFs of Blockchain adoption in SC, we relied on three
leading databases in the management field namely EBSCO, Web of Science and
Scopus. These reference databases are widely available for scholars and gather
interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publications. Regarding the keyword protocol, inclusion
and exclusion criteria were defined to evaluate the relevance of the studies
according to the established research question (Anand et al., 2021; Riahi et
al., 2021). In this respect, we performed a query using the keywords
(“Blockchain” OR “distributed ledger”) AND (“Supply Chain” OR “Logistics”) AND
(“success factor” OR “condition”) to explore the title, abstract and keywords
of the available publications. We covered English language journal articles,
book chapters, and conference proceedings published since 2008, which
corresponds to the emergence of Blockchain technology (Crosby et al., 2016).
After removing the duplicates, 137 matching studies were identified.
We subsequently evaluated the relevance of these studies to our research
question by reading their titles, abstracts and keywords, which resulted in
selecting 97 publications, then by browsing the full texts of the remaining
articles, therefore keeping a total of 56 studies.
3.2 Thematic coding to identify the CSFs
To determine the CSFs for Blockchain
adoption in SC, we performed a thematic coding of the selected studies
supported by NVivo software. Thematic analysis is a qualitative research
approach for investigating, defining, organizing, and generating themes
discovered within a data corpus (Nowell et al., 2017). It is a flexible method
to examining a comprehensive amount of data –in our case a sample of articles
relevant for the research question - and requires from the researcher to be
well structured (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Sodhi & Tang (2014) define four
maturity stages in any research stream namely awareness, then framing, modelling,
and finally validation. Given the nascent application of Blockchain in SC,
thematic analysis as mobilized in the current study can help build awareness
among practitioners and researchers of the CSFs for Blockchain adoption in SC
and support the framing of their natures and links aided by existing theories
and models.
We carried out our thematic coding in
five steps (Braun & Clarke, 2006) that were subsequently followed by the
production of the analysis report. We first got familiarized with the data
corpus, generated initial codes, then searched for aggregated themes, reviewed
them, and finally interpreted, defined and named these themes. These steps were
performed iteratively as we progressed in the analysis of the articles selected
for the SLR. Accordingly, 271 factors were identified within the selected
studies and tagged with codes, which were subsequently aggregated into
higher-order themes. This approach resulted in a coding grid containing 22
classes of factors, which were broadly assembled in six major categories. We
henceforth refer to these 22 classes as our CSFs for Blockchain adoption in SC,
since the factors that are similar are gathered in the same class, thus
allowing their collective exclusivity.
3.3 Social Network Analysis to delineate the
inter-related CSFs
Providing only bibliographic or keyword
analysis can be insufficient for SLR in a multi-disciplinary topic as is the
case of technology adoption in SC. This is even more critical for explanatory
literature reviews as they are concept-centric moving away from paper-centric
or author-centric perspectives (Rowe, 2014). Therefore, studying the frequency
and the correlations of contents through a Social Network Analysis (SNA) is
relevant to identify word clusters and implicit ties within literature on a
subject as recommended by Wang et al. (2017). SNA relies on mapping and
clustering techniques to understand and discover patterns regarding a topic
under investigation (Lee et al., 2018). This approach has been applied to
address diverse research questions in SC and technology management (e.g. Han et
al., 2020; Maruccia et al., 2020). Furthermore, the combination of quantitative
outcomes of a SNA and qualitative insights of a thematic analysis results in
more comprehensive and robust findings, as demonstrated in the recent study of
Ullah et al. (2021).
In this respect, we performed a SNA
supported by the softwares Mendeley and VOSviewer which are accessible for
free. VOSviewer was used to cluster the keywords related to the CSFs and
subsequently create informative infographics about their densities and
relationships. This software is particularly practical as it helps synthetizing
the body of knowledge on a topic and displaying research trends without
advanced computer skills or profound knowledge of clustering techniques (Van
Eck & Waltman, 2010). It first creates networks according to the analysis
purposes, for instance networks of scientific publications, researchers, terms,
etc. Items in these networks can then be connected by co-occurrence,
co-authorship, bibliographic coupling, citation, or co-citation links. To
construct our network of CSFs, a Mendeley file gathering the 56 articles
selected for the SLR was instrumented to VOSviewer. Then, to facilitate the
analysis of this content and simplify the visualization of its results, we
implemented into VOSviewer a thesaurus of the 22 distinctive CSFs based on the
coding grid that was built under NVivo. Accordingly, we were able to map the
content of the network based on co-occurrence of CSFs and directly visualize their
densities and ties (Perianes-Rodriguez et al., 2016). We chose to focus the SNA
on the 22 CSFs rather than on the six major categories in order to provide a
more refined reading of the literature corpus. We then confronted the SNA’s
results with the six global themes to infer further conclusions.
4. Results
4.1 Metrics regarding the studies’distribution
Tableau 1 : Tableau comparatif des
modèles de quatre variantes du blending mono-étage 
Figure 1: Characteristics of the publications selected for the SLR
Among the 56 selected studies for the
SLR, 89% were journal articles while 9% represented conference proceedings and
2% corresponded to book chapters. Figure 1 synthesizes the metrics on this
content’s distribution that is detailed below.
Within the displayed top 15 most
publishing and cited journals on CSFs for Blockchain adoption in SC, we notice
a balance between journals on SC management (e.g. Journal of Cleaner
Production, Transportation Research Part E) and those on technology management
(e.g. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of
Information Management), thereby emphasizing the multidisciplinary feature of
our research topic. The publication trend in this subject started on 2017 with
an exponential growth of scholars’ interest over the last three years. The
nature of the studies evolved over the years from only conceptual to diverse
empirical research. Overall, most selected studies are conceptual (37%) or rely
on qualitative empirical approaches (25%), while 20% are purely quantitative,
hence emphasizing the infancy and exploratory nature of research in our topic.
These studies are marked by the
richness of their used methodologies. The conceptual articles propose a variety
of frameworks based on scientific and grey literature (e.g. Dutta et al., 2020;
Schmidt & Wagner, 2019). The qualitative publications mobilize data from
semi-structured interviews (e.g. Chang et al., 2020), expert panels (e.g.
Hartley & Sawaya, 2019), and intakes of single case studies (e.g. Chen et al.,
2019) and of multiple ones (e.g. Centobelli et al., 2020). As for the
quantitative approaches, most of them rely on multi-criteria decision-making
methods (e.g. Ar et al., 2020; Kumar et al., 2020; Shardeo et al. 2020; Shoaib
et al., 2020) and fewer use modeling approaches (e.g. Kamble et al., 2019;
Nayak & Dhaigude, 2019). Some quantitative studies are mixed with
qualitative phases (18% of the analyzed corpus) performed before (e.g. Van de
Kaa et al., 2020) or after (e.g. Choi, 2019) the quantitative stage.
4.2 CSFs and their categories
From the 56 publications selected for
our SLR, we extracted 271 factors for successful Blockchain adoption in a SC
context and categorized them iteratively as we browsed the literature content.
This inductive thematic analysis performed with NVivo enabled identifying 22
exclusive classes of factors, henceforward representing our CSFs as explained
in the methodology section. Based on established concepts on Information
Technology and SC management literature, we assembled these CSFs into six
higher-order categories to enable structured reporting of our results and their
discussion in light of theoretical streams. As the thematic analysis of the
publications selected for the SLR progressed, we noticed that we achieved
saturation in uncovering the themes and their associated factors. We argue that
these findings are likely exhaustive as our corpus was broad with content from
a wide variety of scholarly sources. The outcomes of this thematic analysis are
summarized in Table 1 and detailed hereafter.
We first identified three CSFs
pertaining to the theme of Data governance. The latter refers to the
practices established by organizations "to take control over all
aspects of their data resource from the setting of integrity constraints for
data quality to the creation of enterprise-wide policies on data access and
security" (Begg & Caira, 2012, p.3). The first CSF in this theme
is Data security, which covers the risk management practices to
make it impossible to hack the system and lose the data stored in the
Blockchain (Shoaib et al., 2020). These practices also concern the
establishment by the SC actors of authorizations for secure access (Liu &
Li, 2019) and decentralized and self-sovereign control of data (Prasad et al.,
2018) within a trustless and permissioned system (Surjandy et al., 2018).
Second, Data integrity includes the practices implemented among
the stakeholders to ensure the authenticity, credibility, immutability (Dutta
et al., 2020; Hastig & Sodhi, 2020), and quality fairness (Shoaib et al.,
2020) of the data in order to make it free from bias and human error. Finally, Data
privacy is related to the use of encryption methods to ensure the
protection (Park et al., 2020) and the anonymity of records and users (Hastig &
Sodhi, 2020; Kamble et al., 2019).
Then, a second theme that emerged from
the literature analysis was seven functional properties of Blockchain
considered as CSFs for the successful adoption of this technology in SC. In
this respect, several studies emphasized the need for a mature platform
with a credible architecture supporting the enacting of Smart contracts
(Hastig & Sodhi, 2020; Prasad et al., 2018), the removal of intermediaries
(Wang et al., 2019), the integration of Cloud and RFID technologies (Prasad et
al., 2018) and the security of transactions (Dutta et al., 2020). Blockchain
interoperability is also a frequently cited CSF in SC contexts. This
technology should rely on standards to enable its real time integration and
coexistence (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020) with the stakeholders' IT and legacy
systems (Pautasso et al., 2020), with other cloud and trusted IoT services
(Prasad et al., 2018; Surjandy et al., 2018) and between Blockchains (Wang et
al., 2019). Moreover, the used Blockchain should be highly scalable
with a miner incentive (Prasad et al., 2018) and a modular structure (Giustia
et al., 2019) that can be extended in the long-term (Shoaib et al., 2020) with
developed sidechains (Ciric et al., 2019), and can handle a potential bloat
(Prasad et al., 2018) in terms of increased size, throughput, latency and
bandwidth (Ar et al., 2020). In addition, successful adoption of Blockchain in
SC requires its suitability for this context (Hastig & Sodhi,
2020) specifically through increased practicality for multi-locations and
remote suppliers (Tayal et al., 2020) and by responding to the stakeholders'
constraints in terms of time behavior and resource utilization (Çaldağ &
Gökalp, 2020). It also calls for its eased (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020) and
permanent accessibility for use (Shoaib et al., 2020) by a wide
range of actors (Dutta et al., 2020) within the SC organizations. Finally, it
is fundamental for the Blockchain to be easily auditable with
available documentation (Baldus and Hatton, 2019) and specific performance
metrics to support testability and replicability (Çaldağ and Gökalp, 2020), and
to be resilient through a sustainable and durable system (Yadav
and Sigh, 2020) that is fault tolerant (Panetto et al., 2019) and recoverable
to a desired state after failure (Çaldağ and Gökalp, 2020).
Next, the analysis of the selected
articles resulted in identifying CSFs associated with three organizational
capabilities. An important number of studies pointed the central role of Information
System (IS) capabilities to support the successful adoption of
Blockchain in SC. IS capabilities refer to value-added combinations of
infrastructure, human assets and corporate culture to effectively implement and
utilize IT systems (Aydiner et al., 2019). In the context of the present study,
the identified IS capabilities surround four aspects: (i) the maturity,
flexibility and readiness of the IT infrastructure to deploy and leverage a
Blockchain (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020; Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019), (ii) the
availability of an interdisciplinary talent pool around this technology
(Dwivedi et al., 2019; Prasad et al., 2018) including experts in Big data,
prototyping, finance, law, software implementation and project management
(Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020; Hastig & Sodhi, 2020) -The organization should
strive for creating such pool for instance through training and professional
assistance (Zhou et al., 2020) -, (iii) the accessibility to applied knowledge on
Blockchain mainly innovative applications, valid use cases and advanced
research (Hiskey, 2019; Thomé et al., 2020), and finally (iv) the adequacy of
the organization's structure and culture to Blockchain (Hastig & Sodhi,
2020; Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019). The second CSF in this global theme is
related to the strategic alignment between the business and the
Blockchain technology. It helps a firm maximize return on IT investment,
achieve competitive advantage through IS, and provides it with guidance to react
to new opportunities (Avison et al., 2004). Items inherent to this alignment
supporting the successful adoption of Blockchain in SC focus on top management
support (Dwivedi et al., 2019), the organization's understanding of this
technology’s suitability and benefits for its business (Hastig & Sodhi,
2020; Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019), and the design of a well-thought business
model adapted to Blockchain (Prasad et al., 2018). The third and final CSF in
this category is associated with financial capabilities to assist
the Blockchain implementation, its maturation process and its sustained use
(Esmaeilian et al., 2018; Rashideh, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020).
The fourth theme that emerged from the
thematic analysis is related to the Blockchain ecosystem that is
composed of three CSFs. In the field of management of technology and
innovation, an ecosystem refers to a multilayer social network consisting of
actors with different attributes, decision principles, and beliefs (Tsujimoto
et al., 2018). The first identified CSF within this theme corresponds to the legal
framework that regulates cryptographic activities (Çaldağ & Gökalp,
2020). Blockchain requires an easy local legislation (Zhou et al., 2020) with a
high degree of laws' clarity (Prasad et al., 2018) and political certainty
(Kohler and Pizzol, 2020). The second ecosystem related CSF focuses on community
collaboration. The technology choices and commonly agreed solutions
must be established through a rich collaboration between the industry actors
(Van Hoek et al., 2020), trade associations, aware customers (Rane et al.,
2020), small players, academia and competitors (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020) in
order to advance the technological developments and generate new projects.
Finally, the third CSF in this category is related to the multilevel
acceptance of the Blockchain technology, with aware, motivated and
engaged consumers (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020), participative users (Çaldağ &
Gökalp, 2020; Prasad et al., 2018) and educated and committed employees among
the SC stakeholders (Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019).
Another theme identified following the
content analysis with NVivo represents the peculiarities of the Blockchain
deployment project management, which included three CSFs. First, the
involved stakeholders should perform a cost-benefit analysis
taking into account the financial feasibility of the Blockchain implementation
(Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020) and its cost effectiveness in terms of
administration cost reductions (Shoaib et al., 2020), energy efficiency (Kumar
et al., 2020) and productivity (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020). Second, this
project management should respect several project-operating principles.
It requires an upfront planning of the deployment roadmap (Hartley &
Sawaya, 2019; Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019) that ensures independence of the
Blockchain project from the daily business and respects a satisfactory speed
(Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019). It also necessitates clear definition of
scopes, expectations (Shou et al., 2020), roles, responsibilities (Wang et al.,
2019) and synergies between the project actors (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020).
These actors should operate according to an incremental approach for
implementation with the help of agile methods (Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019),
and should closely cooperate with each other (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020) with no
deadlock between the business functions and the IT units (Holotiuk &
Moormann, 2019). The third CSF concerns the customer centricity
all along the Blockchain deployment project (Holotiuk & Moormann, 2019) to
foster just-in-time development of features (Shoaib et al., 2020) and improve
the design of the user interface aesthetics (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020) by
constantly integrating the customer feedback (Yadav & Sigh, 2020).
The identified final CSFs are related
to three elements within the theme of SC management. This concept is
defined as the business processes that “span the spectrum from the raw
material extractor to the end user to provide product, information, and
services that add value” (Cox et al., 2012, p.49). The first emerging CSF
is associated with information management, which refers to the
process of collecting, organizing, storing and providing information within
organizations (Barmeyer et al., 2019). In the context of Blockchain adoption in
SC, our analysis of the selected articles pointed out many features of
information management. The stakeholders need to establish transparent exchange
of information (Yang et al., 2019), that should be captured in real-time
(Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020; Hastig & Sodhi, 2020), visible to all
stakeholders (Kamble et al., 2019), and decentralized while respecting the
consensual privacy constraints (Hastig and Sodhi, 2020). This information
capture and exchange concerns SC sourcing, maintenance, and flows (Hastig &
Sodhi, 2020). It enables traceability of causes, goods’ location, accidents,
and fraud in the SC from the manufacturer to the end-user (Yadav & Sigh,
2020), and promotes SC’s sustainability (Saikouk &
Spalanzani, 2016). Then, social capital of the SC
emerged as a second CSF, as we identified items corresponding to its dimensions
namely relational, structural and cognitive capitals (Nahapiet & Ghoshal,
1998; Saikouk et al., 2021). The highlighted elements of the relational capital
are trust (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020), communication and collaboration between
the partners (Altuntaş Vural et al., 2020; Giustia et al., 2019), with truthful
knowledge transfer (Surjandy et al., 2018) and open-mindedness for the
development and execution of new ways of working (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020).
The cognitive capital includes aligned business objectives among the partners
(Hastig & Sodhi, 2020), and a clearly defined and shared vision and value
proposition (Giustia et al., 2019). As for the structural dimension, it
involves the alignment of the stakeholders' incentives and data features (Wang
et al., 2019) and leadership readiness for the decentralization of management
and power diffusion induced by the Blockchain (Prasad et al., 2018). As
explained in Table 1, this dimension also covers the stakeholders' on-chain and
off-chain power governance (Dutta et al., 2020; Kohler & Pizzol, 2020;
Pautasso et al., 2020), and their accountability (Çaldağ & Gökalp, 2020).
The last CSF in this theme represents SC
operations and processes management, namely processes of common
production, material stewardship (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020), demand sharing,
and logistics’ synchronization (Shoaib et al., 2020), which should be
automated, standardized and mapped (Dutta et al., 2020; Hastig & Sodhi,
2020).
4.3 Densities and ties of CSFs
To unveil the implicit ties of the
identified 22 CSFs within the extant literature, we performed a co-occurrence
social network analysis (SNA) of the 56 selected articles supported by
VOSviewer. A thesaurus matching the CSFs with the articles' contents that were
thematically coded with NVivo was implemented into VOSviewer to enable the
direct visualization of the CSFs. Linkages among the keywords attached to the
CSFs were mapped using network analysis, and broader groups or clusters with
strong internal relationship patterns were identified using clustering method
(Mishra et al., 2007). This SNA resulted in three different findings as
explained below and illustrated in the figures of this section. The labels of
some CSFs are not clearly displayed in the figures to avoid overlapping labels,
but will be addressed when relevant in the following paragraphs. The
implications of these findings will be discussed in sections 5 and 6.
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First, the SNA enabled identifying three distinct clusters
(Figure 2) conveying how the field of research on CSFs for Blockchain adoption
in SC is delineated. The color density of a cluster is associated with the
number of its belonging nodes, their frequency, and the number and strength of
their mutual ties. The most dominant cluster,
labeled the socio-technical cluster,
mainly consists of the CSFs related to Data governance, most of the functional
properties of Blockchain, SC information management, its operations and
processes management, and its social capital. The subsequent cluster in terms
of density encompasses all the organizational capabilities’ CSFs, most of the
factors related to the Blockchain ecosystem, and the operating principles of
the deployment project. This cluster conveys the complementarity of capabilities
at the macro (environment), meso (organization) and micro (project) levels of
analysis for the successful adoption of Blockchain in SC. The third and
final cluster shows that the CSFs of customer centricity, accessibility for
use, auditability and context suitability are usually examined together. The
connectedness of these factors expresses that, for Blockchain in SC, a
user-focused development is necessary to foster its usability and reliability.
Second, the software enabled
determining the most recurrent CSFs (Figure 3), either through network mapping
visualization (Figure 3a) or through item density visualization (Figure 3b).
The former reports the CSF importance via the size of its associated circle,
while the latter displays this importance through the CSF color. The colors by
default range from blue to yellow, with yellow representing the most recurrent
CSFs. As results, we identified five CSFs with marked densities compared to the
other factors, which hence represent the most examined critical aspects of Blockchain
adoption in SC. These factors are Data security, IS capabilities,
interoperability, information management and social capital of SC.
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Third, we were able to determine the strongest links between
the CSFs, either within or across their clusters of belonging. The stronger the
relationship between two CSFs, the thicker the line that is used to illustrate
their link. These links are summarized in Table 2 and displayed in the results
of VOSviewer mapping (Appendix 1). This approach brings complementary insights
that can be missed using only frequency based delineation of clusters and
nodes. We analyzed these links from the factor then from the cluster
perspectives as explained below.
• At the level of CSFs, the
factors having several strong links with other factors are respectively social
capital of SC (6 links), Data security (6), IS capabilities (6), information
management in SC (5), interoperability (4) and context suitability (4).
These findings confirm the importance of the five first CSFs underlined in the
frequency results in the previous paragraph and depicted in Figure 3. They
additionally demonstrate their central roles and that of Blockchain suitability
to the SC context, in relation to other CSFs. Finally, seven factors were found
to have no strong link with any other CSF, namely accessibility for use,
cost-benefit analysis, customer centricity, Data privacy, legal framework,
resilience, and SC operations and processes management.
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·
At the level of clusters, most
of the strong identified connections between CSFs (34/44) are intra-cluster,
with the socio-technical cluster representing the majority of these links
followed by the Macro/Meso/Micro capabilities’ cluster. These findings are
aligned with the cluster density results presented in the second paragraph of
this section and illustrated in Figure 2. Concerning the inter-clusters’ links
(Table 2), we noted the existence of strong relationships between the
socio-technical cluster on the one hand, and the Macro/Meso/Micro capabilities
and user-focused development clusters on the other hand, with no significant
link between the latter two.
To provide substantial inferences from
this study, we additionally confronted the deductive mapping results of
VOSviewer with the conceptual groupings that we carried out in section 4.2
using an inductive coding approach. Table 2 includes the theme of belonging of
each CSF and of its connected factors. First, we note that among the 34 strong
intra-cluster links, 12 are intra-theme. This finding combined with the network
map (Figure 3a) suggests that the themes of Data governance and
SC management entirely belong to the socio-technical cluster,
while the theme of organizational capabilities is an integral
part of the Macro/Meso/Micro capabilities’ cluster. Second, when we
examine the inter-clusters’ relationships in light of the six themes that
emerged from our NVivo analysis, we observe that: (i) Blockchain
functional properties’ theme is at the intersection of the socio-technical
and user-focused development clusters, (ii) Blockchain ecosystem
represents a junction between the socio-technical and the
Macro/Micro/Meso capabilities’ clusters, and (iii) Blockchain
deployment project management is at the edge of the three clusters.
The implications of these results are discussed in the next section.
5. Discussion
The advent of Blockchain is capturing
the attention and inducing opportunities and challenges for both practitioners
and academics. This is particularly the case of Supply Chain management
(Kshetri, 2018) thanks to the important potential of Blockchain to provide high
levels of efficiency to Supply Chain (SC) along with decentralized operations
(Fosso Wamba & Queiroz, 2020). To help practitioners in this field grasp
the added value of Blockchain, we performed a systematic literature review
(SLR) to unveil the inter-related critical success factors (CSFs) for this
technology adoption in a SC context combining two types of content analyses. On
the one hand, we used NVivo to perform an inductive coding of the 56 selected
articles for the SLR, which resulted in identifying 22 distinct CSFs that we
interpreted and gathered in six broader themes based on theoretical concepts.
On the other hand, we run a Social Network Analysis (SNA) supported by
VOSviewer to deduce relationships among the 22 CSFs based on their implicit
co-occurrences in the articles' database. These analyses provided complementary
findings as discussed in the following paragraphs.
5.1 Blockchain adoption in SC: a nascent managerial
practice and research stream
Our inspection of the publications’
metrics over the years on CSFs for Blockchain adoption in SC showed that
scholars have started focusing on this topic since 2017, although Blockchain
technology emerged long before (Nakamoto, 2008). This result conveys that
Blockchain applications in SC are still in their infancy and that a good number
of managers still do not master Blockchain-related concepts (e.g., enablers,
adoption, implementation, etc.) as underlined by Fosso Wamba & Queiroz
(2020). This conclusion is even more corroborated by the evolution of the
studies’ natures, which were mostly conceptual in 2017 and have embraced
different empirical approaches since then (Figure 1). Then, our bibliometric
results demonstrated a balance in terms of publication between
technology-oriented journals and conferences, and those focusing on managerial
issues. While Yli-Huumo et al. (2016) argued that most literature on this topic
has been addressing the technological challenges of peer-to-peer Blockchain
usage, our results imply that, since 2017, there is an increased awareness
among researchers of the detrimental organizational and project related issues
that can even lead to the halting of Blockchain implementation projects. The
natures of CSFs and their links identified in this study fall within this
conclusion as explained hereafter.
5.2 Socio-technical features: A catalytic role for
Blockchain adoption
First, the subjects of the three
clusters that emerged from the SNA along with the types of their underlying
CSFs echoes a rising interest of researchers on the combined technical and
managerial conditions that would foster Blockchain adoption in SC. In this
respect, the high density of the socio-technical cluster shows that CSFs
related to social capital are often investigated along with technical CSFs,
therefore generalizing to Blockchain technology the catalytic role of this
capital in shaping the decisions and structuring the capacities regarding
technology adoption (Wu & Chiu, 2018). Then, the Macro/Meso/Micro
capabilities’ cluster was moderately dense and combined IT-related, but mostly,
managerial capacities at different levels, thereby emphasizing their
complementarity for successful technology adoption (Kurnia et al., 2019)
especially in the case of Blockchain in SC (Kouhizadeh et al., 2019). Finally,
although the user-focused development cluster was of a scant density, the
natures of its CSFs suggest that the reliability of Blockchain requires
elevated degrees of customer-centricity and rooting in a SC context. This
result hence highlights the interdependence of technical and managerial
concerns for Blockchain development (Dujak & Sajter, 2019).
5.3 The most critical factors for Blockchain adoption
in SC
Second, the identification of the
central CSFs based on the analysis of occurrences and links showed a
symmetry between technical factors (Data security, IS capabilities,
interoperability) and managerial matters in the specific context of SC (Social
Capital, Information management) with slightly more focus on the formers.
Scholars’ interest in these factors can be accounted for the fact that they
represent specific challenges for SC management. Indeed, Data security is a
fundamental precondition to mature Blockchain pilots to long-term adoption of
this technology in SC (Behnke & Janssen, 2020). However, it is difficult to
establish uniform authorities and definitions for generating, accessing, and
altering data in a Blockchain based SC (Kumar et al., 2020). These common
agreements are necessary because suppliers would otherwise need to comply with
different interface standards, therefore making Blockchain economically
inefficient (Behnke & Janssen, 2020). Then IS capabilities, which convey
the readiness of the organization’s information system for Blockchain
implementation, induce particular problems due to the scarcity of knowledge for
Blockchain nascent use in SC (Fosso Wamba & Queiroz, 2020) and the
difficulty of aligning traditional IS with this technology’s disruptive
features. In particular, SC actors put much efforts in solving the
interoperability issues of Blockchain with their legacy IT infrastructures
(Pautasso et al., 2020) and with other cloud-based solutions (Surjandy et al.,
2018). Finally, information management in SC and its social capital emerged as
dense CSFs due to the complexity of aligning their Blockchain induced
properties with the peculiarities of SC. The latter factor is driven by the
leadership readiness for the decentralization of management and power diffusion
(Prasad et al., 2018) whereas the former requires the establishment of
transparent and decentralized processes (Hastig & Sodhi, 2020; Yang et al.,
2019). These features are ideologically conflicting with the power-driven
nature of buyer-supplier relationships (Reimann & Ketchen, 2017).
5.4 Blockchain: a potential source of technological
determinism
Third, regarding the links between the
CSFs, as explained in section 4.3, most of the strong identified connections
are intra-cluster, which resonates with the rationale of VOSviewer clustering
algorithm that brings together close nodes (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010; 2014).
As for the inter-clusters’ links, we observed that the most significant ones
associate the socio-technical cluster with the other two. This central position
of this cluster suggests that Blockchain can be a source of technological
determinism (Ostern, 2019) by forcing the SC stakeholders to align their
capacities and development processes with the standards induced by the
Blockchain.
5.5 Inner and outer ties resulting from the
combination of inductive and deductive analysis of the literature
The confrontation of these VOSviewer
results with those of our categorization using NVivo brought additional
insights to the natures and roles of the 22 CSFs and the six global themes.
On the one hand, we showed that some
themes represent integral parts of certain clusters, namely Data governance and
SC management in the socio-technical cluster, and organizational capabilities
in the Macro/Meso/Micro capabilities’ cluster. Such result can provide guidance
to future research that would examine the building blocks of socio-technical
and multilevel capabilities in the context of Blockchain adoption in SC.
On the other hand, we found that
Blockchain functional properties’ theme was at the border of the
socio-technical and user-focused development clusters due to the nature of the
seven CSFs in this theme that relate to both clusters’ topics. Also, Blockchain
ecosystem interfered with the socio-technical and the Macro/Micro/Meso
capabilities’ clusters, thereby confirming that Blockchain adoption is subject
to the influence of conditions internal and external to the SC organizations
(Orji et al., 2020). Finally, the theme of Blockchain deployment project
management was at the crossroads of the three clusters, although two of its
three constituting factors (Cost-benefit analysis and customer-centricity) did
not possess a strong link with any other CSF and the third component (Project
operating principles) had a single dense relationship with IS capabilities
(Table 2). This result suggests that project management plays a central role
with respect to Blockchain adoption in SC that did not transpire from the sole
co-occurrence analysis of the extant literature. Accordingly, scholars and
practitioners should grant a specific attention to the spin-offs of deploying
agile methods, focusing on customers and continuously monitoring the cost all
along the Blockchain implementation projects.
In sum, our content analysis supported
by NVivo unveiled an understanding of the CSFs’ roles that could not have been
delineated by the SNA only. We hence show the complementarity between inductive
interpretive coding and deductive analysis of the literature using an automated
tool.
6. Conclusions and RESEARCH AVENUES
This study proposes a characterization
of the inter-related critical success factors for Blockchain adoption in Supply
Chain. As detailed in the previous section, our results shed light on the
conceptual natures of the factors and on the potential mechanisms by which they
jointly foster the success of Blockchain adoption in SC. We also provide
managers with guidance to reap the benefits of this technology for SC
operations and foster its future adoption. First, we show that socio-technical
factors play a central role with regard to factors associated with
user-centricity and multi-level capabilities. Hence, Blockchain may induce
technological determinism thereby requiring the SC stakeholders to be aware of
the subsequent transformations that their capacities and processes should
undergo in order to align with Blockchain standards and grasp its added value.
Second, our findings draw the attention of SC managers to the most challenging
technical factors for the future adoption of Blockchain in this
interorganizational context. They include establishing uniform data security
standards to make Blockchain economically efficient, and ripening IS
capabilities in terms of Blockchain knowledge pool and the interoperability of
legacy IT infrastructures. Finally, we identified critical factors related to
SC management and Blockchain deployment project management. The former urge
practitioners to adapt information management and social capital in SC contexts
that are often power-driven, to the decentralization and transparency peculiarities
of Blockchain. The latter are mostly associated with customer focus and the use
of agile methods throughout the project. Accordingly, we stress that the future
implementation of this technology in SC requires not only resolving technical
issues which has long been the focus of pilot projects and scholars, but also
establishing efficient project principles and a sustained SC climate conducive
to this adoption and to the upcoming evolutions of Blockchain.
To identify further theoretical
implications of our results and provide research perspectives, we propose to
analyze this study's findings in light of the TOE (Technology Organization
Environment) framework (Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1990). The TOE model
suggests that technological, organizational and environmental contexts
influence the process by which a firm adopts and implements a technological
innovation. The Technology dimension incorporates the properties of the
technological innovation. The Organization dimension corresponds to the
organization's structure, resources as well as intra-firm communications. The
Environment dimension refers to the characteristics of industries, markets and
those of the legal environment (Kouhizadeh et al., 2021). Although an important
number of studies on Blockchain adoption in SC mobilize the classical models
such as the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (e.g. Kamble et al., 2019; Lou &
Li, 2017) or the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)
(e.g. Francisco & Swanson, 2018; Queiroz & Fosso Wamba, 2019), we
believe that TOE can provide a more comprehensive analysis of this technology
adoption determinants in SC for several reasons. TAM and its extended version
in UTAUT focus on investigating the acceptance factors of new technologies from
the individual organization point of view (Gokalp et al., 2020). Nevertheless,
the decision to adopt a technology (Bhakoo & Choi, 2013), particularly
Blockchain, in SC can also be a response to isomorphic institutional pressures
and hence depends on external conditions as well as internal ones. The SC
actors are required to align with the social expectations and the persistent
requirements of investors and stakeholders within the sector (Orji et al.,
2020). Also, government policy and support is an influential factor that
entails the ability of government agencies to provide support and enact
regulations that foster Blockchain adoption (Montecchi et al., 2019). Figure 4
summarizes the main findings of our content analysis and structures them
according to the TOE model. The size of a CSF's font conveys its importance in
terms of occurrence and ties with other CSFs. The relationships internal to a
building block in each dimension are represented through circular arrows, while
the outer ties are pictured using straight-line arrows. The thicker the arrow
the more important is the link based on the SNA results using VOSviewer.
The unit of analysis in this study is
the SC where Blockchain is adopted following a deployment project. Therefore,
the Organization dimension gathers the themes of organizational capabilities,
SC management, and Blockchain deployment project management. The Technology
dimension includes Blockchain properties as well as Data governance related
factors. Finally, the Environment dimension corresponds to the Blockchain
ecosystem theme.
Figure 4 shows that extant research
examined CSFs associated with the three TOE dimensions, with a specific
attention to Technology and Organization issues, either in terms of the
factors' frequency or with respect to their inner ties within each dimension.
The examined cross-dimensions’ ties are between Organization in one side, and
Technology and Environment in other sides. On the one hand, the strong
relationship between the dimensions of Technology and Organization seems to be
mainly driven by the SC management theme, due to the influence that Blockchain
features have directly on SC processes and operations rather than on a single
stakeholder's capabilities. However, the tie between the organizational capabilities'
theme and that of SC management suggests the potential existence of an indirect
relationship between Technology dimension and the former theme through the
latter theme. Future studies can empirically investigate these direct and
indirect effects and provide a better understanding of the dynamics between the
Technology and Organization dimensions with respect to the success of
Blockchain adoption in SC. On the other hand, the link between Organization and
Environment dimensions seems to be mainly induced by the ecosystem theme, with
a pronounced tie with the single organization's capabilities’ theme. The links
between this latter theme and those of Blockchain deployment project management
and SC management indicate possible indirect effects of Blockchain ecosystem on
these themes through that of organizational capabilities. Future studies can
hence examine the degree to which government policies and sectorial constraints
directly shape the required capabilities for Blockchain adoption at the
organizational level, and indirectly at SC and project levels. Finally, we
could not find evidence of any link between the Technology and Environment
dimensions, although advancing Blockchain developments requires a favorable
legislation and a high involvement of different players (Hastig & Sodhi,
2020; Van Hoek et al., 2020). Therefore, further research may investigate the
mediating role of the Organization dimension on the link between the other two
TOE components in the case of Blockchain adoption in a SC context.
In sum, we contribute to the few studies that showed the
suitability of the TOE framework as a theoretical lens to examine the
determinants of Blockchain adoption in SC (e.g. Clohessy et al., 2019; Gokalp
et al., 2020; Wong et al., 2020). We propose an initial understanding of the
dynamics between this model's dimensions that have been rarely explored for our
adoption context (Wong et al., 2020), and offer opportunities for future
empirical research to assess these relationships. We particularly emphasize the
relevance of examining the potential direct and mediating roles of the
Organization dimension components that we unveiled in the previous paragraph.
This finding suggests that, while most studies on Blockchain adoption focus on
technological issues and tend to neglect organizational matters (Yli-Huumo et
al., 2016), scholars in the specific case of SC implicitly put a great emphasis
on the latter subjects. Finally, this study proposes a description of the
factors composing the dimensions of the TOE framework in the case of Blockchain
adoption in SC. This description can be more accurate for future research on
the studied adoption phenomenon than the transposition of existing operationalizations
of these dimensions developed for other technologies or in other contexts.
These studies can for instance adopt a critical realist perspective (Archer et
al., 2013; Bhaskar, 1998) and accordingly investigate how the factors belonging
to the TOE dimensions act as generative mechanisms (Henfridsson & Bygstad,
2013) of Blockchain adoption’s contribution to SC performance (Fosso Wamba et
al., 2020), its resilience (Min, 2019), sustainability (Saberi et al., 2019),
traceability (Dong et al., 2020), transparency (Francisco & Swanson, 2018),
agility and adaptability (Sheel & Nath, 2019). Further research can also
assess the criticality of these factors and examine the evolution of their
impacts over the post-adoption stages (Karahanna et al., 1999).
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8.
BIOGRAPHY
Lamiae
Benhayoun is Researcher Professor in Management
Information Systems at Rabat Business School, Morocco. She holds an engineering
degree in Telecommunications and a Ph.D with a double qualification in
Management Sciences and Automation Engineering. Her main research interests
include collaborative innovation and digital transformation, with a focus on
knowledge management and the adoption of emerging technologies. Dr. Benhayoun
has published several articles in international peer reviewed journals such as
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Manufacturing
Technology Management, and Journal of Business Research.
Tarik
Saikouk is Associate Professor in Supply Chain
management at Excelia Business School in La Rochelle, France. He holds a PhD in
Management Science from the University of Grenoble Alpes, and an engineering
degree from the University of Technology of Troyes in France. Dr. Saikouk works
on Lean Management issues and social dynamics within the supply chain. His
publications record includes book chapters and articles in international
peer-review Journals such as Production Planning Control, Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, and Expert System With Applications.
1Lamiae
Benhayoun, Rabat Business School
lamiae.benhayoun@uir.ac.ma
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4183-7205
2Tarik
Saikouk, Excelia Business School
saikoukt@excelia-group.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9674-4722