Blockchain Papers

Amit Vishwakarma, G.S. Dangayach, M.L. Meena, Manish Kumar Jindal · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Pierluigi Gallo, Eleonora Riva Sanseverino, Giuseppe Sciumè, Gaetano Zizzo

This paper outlines the European perspective on circularity in the energy sector and details how blockchain could support it. Moreover, while the need for raw materials and e-fuels is increasing (due to the economic, industrial, and societal ecological transformation to slow down the pace of climate change), their supply becomes more and more risky. Therefore, technologies to support tracing and certification are in the spotlight. To achieve resilience to new threats, Europe is focusing on circularity in all fields. Circularity requires the tracing of substances and devices, food, and products, to retrieve and recycle as much as possible. Besides the need to limit the exploitation of the planet’s resources and thus stay within the planetary boundaries, circularity is tightly connected to strategic dependencies on highly unstable or politically distant countries. This issue is further aggravated by the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Digital technologies, like Distributed Ledger Technologies, can well support the implementation of circularity in many fields. The paper identifies challenges and proposes potential solutions related to the implementation of circularity. It also explores the application of circularity principles in the energy sector, with a focus on energy communities. Energy communities involve local stakeholders coming together to generate, consume, and manage renewable energy collectively. Overall, the paper provides insights into the European perspective on ecological transition, highlighting the importance of systemic transformation, resilience, and circularity in addressing climate change and achieving sustainability goals. It explores the role of digital technologies, such as Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), in supporting circular practices and discusses specific applications in the energy sector.

Ting Chen, Yongjian Li, Fangchao Xu

Abstract Blockchain can help reduce fraud and improve visibility and traceability in supply chains. It has attracted significant investments in commercial practices, especially in the luxury industry. With the recent upgradation of consumption worldwide, consumers care more about the source of information and the value of products. Will tracing products using blockchain technology help competing luxury brands gain consumer trust and cultivate new competitive advantages? This paper proposes a supply chain model comprising two competing manufacturers selling online through retail or direct channels. It also explores whether and how manufacturers implement traceability strategies, including building traceability systems or joining third‐party blockchain platforms, considering blockchain's traceability. The results show that, when only one party adopts the traceability strategy, being the first mover to join a third‐party blockchain platform with high traceability is always beneficial for improving the profits of all parties. In this scenario, the blockchain platform should adopt as high traceability as possible. When both parties choose to trace the product source, a win–win strategy for them is to join third‐party blockchain platforms with low traceability. In this scenario, the untraced party is motivated to implement a traceability strategy. Furthermore, if consumer perceptions of traceability are high, an untraced manufacturer can obtain higher profits using the traceability strategy. Otherwise, low consumer perception of traceability leads to low‐price competition, which is harmful to luxury brands.

Jianting Xia, Haohua Li, Zhou He

Blockchain technology, as a revolutionary technology that has emerged in recent years, holds significant potential for application in supply chain operations. This paper provides a systematic review of blockchain-based supply chain case studies. The existing literature primarily focuses on the food, agriculture, and pharmaceutical sectors, highlighting the advantages of blockchain technology in terms of traceability and transparency. However, there is a limited number of studies addressing the improvement of collaboration efficiency in supply chains, particularly within the realm of information technology enterprises. By conducting semi-structured interviews, we present a case study of Lenovo, a leading enterprise utilizing blockchain technology, to elucidate the advantages of using blockchain technology. Subsequently, it proposes a conceptual model for a blockchain-based information collaboration system and discusses the potential applications of blockchain technology in supply chain collaboration. Our study contributes to the existing work on blockchain applications to enhance supply chain collaboration.

Seyyed-Alireza Radmanesh, Alireza Haji, Omid Fatahi Valilai

Blockchain technology, as a well-known technology in financial spaces, has many advantages in non-financial industries and supply chains. Two of the main benefits of blockchain technology are smart contracts and distributed decision-making processes. These features can be especially useful in implementing Industry 4.0. Moreover, this technology can increase productivity in supply chains by enhancing transparency, reducing operational costs, and improving monitoring and supervision throughout the lifecycle of products. In this paper, we introduce a blockchain-based architecture for a supply chain in cloud architecture. This approach leads to the more efficient implementation of Industry 4.0 and increases sustainability in the supply chain. In this study, we aim to investigate whether the proposed blockchain-based platform affects sustainability in the supply chain. From a sustainability perspective, we solve the large-scale problem of a cloud-based production–distribution system in centralized and distributed states. The results of the solution indicate a significant improvement in the decentralized state compared to the centralized state and this improvement enhances sustainability in the supply chain. We verify the proposed model by considering an axiomatic design algorithm. In the distributed model, the system cost is reduced by up to 45%, and the solving time is decreased by approximately 51% in pessimistic conditions and by about 87% in optimistic conditions. These improvements directly enhance economic and environmental sustainability, resulting in reduced energy consumption.

Alex Suta, Árpád Tóth

Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are often considered major improvements in the capability of certain areas in sustainability accounting research. As such, it is argued that blockchains could be used for validation, data management, transactions settlements and objective measurement for corporate sustainability indicators, such as Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions during production processes. Following a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology in data collection and database formation, the current work provides an analysis of the existing literature consisting of 59 contributions on blockchain applications in sustainability accounting. Several analysis steps containing bibliometric analyses were performed and presented, including novel coding of methodologies and industrial applications. Additionally, text mining analysis of the meta-data of contributions was conducted for the purpose of topic generation and retrieval of comparative insights. Results provide insights into the mapping of baseline technologies, regulatory environment, and practical factors outlined by previous contributions that influence the applications of blockchains for this cause. Future research areas include blockchains paired with other future-proof technologies, such as digital accounting tools (e.g. XBRL) or hardware IoT technologies in smart factories, to aid in the development of new pipelines of measurable and traceable sustainability information.

Sunhilde Cuc

The textile and fashion industry is on the brink of a major disruption, and blockchain technology (BT) presents a promising solution that could transform the industry by facilitating supply chain transparency, traceability, and sustainability. This article explores the potential of BT in the textile and fashion industry, with a focus on its current applications and potential impact. Using case studies and analyzing all announced blockchain projects from January 2017 to January 2023, we examine the diversity of blockchain applications across different aspects of the textile and fashion industry, including smart contracts and payment processing, supply chain tracking, sustainability applications, and customer engagement. The findings suggest an increasing number of companies are adopting BT, and that BT has the potential to revolutionize the T and F industry by creating a more transparent and efficient supply chain, reducing fraud and counterfeiting, and increasing customer confidence in products. We also identified the challenges and difficulties that may arise during the implementation of BT. This article contributes to the literature on BT in the textile and fashion industry, providing critical insights into its potential impact.

Ruchi Mishra, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Satish Kumar, Sachin Kumar Mangla · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Muhammad Hamza Naseem, Jiaqi Yang, Tongxia Zhang, Waseem Alam

Digital technologies like blockchain, the Internet of Things, and smart warehouses have been developed due to the fourth industrial revolution, or “Industry 4.0.” Any business’ supply chain includes several stakeholders, including manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, and final consumers. The demand for firms to utilize these technologies to gain competitive advantages has intensified in the modern world due to rising worldwide rivalry. Additionally, the adoption of blockchain technology, in particular, can have a huge impact on a company’s reverse logistics, accelerating processes by decentralizing, tracking, and overseeing the delivery of items to final consumers. The goal of this study is to pinpoint those significant obstacles because several must be overcome for blockchain technology to be successfully implemented in reverse logistics. This study identified 16 impediments to the adoption of blockchain technology after a thorough analysis of the literature and expert opinion. The fuzzy AHP approach was used in this study to rank those barriers as this approach helps to address the complexity and uncertainty associated with decision-making in supply chain management and provides a more robust and reliable ranking of the barriers to blockchain adoption. A case study of Pakistan’s e-commerce industry was carried out. The results show that the high installation cost, stakeholders’ resistance to the blockchain, and the lack of top-management support are the critical success factors in blockchain adoption. From an industrial perspective, the study highlights the need for businesses to carefully evaluate the potential benefits and costs of adopting blockchain technology. It also underscores the importance of addressing the barriers to adoption to ensure successful implementation. By doing so, businesses can enhance their supply chain management and improve their overall competitiveness.

Summer K. Mohamed, Sandra S. G. Haddad, Mahmoud Barakat, Bojan Rosi

Due to the complexity of building supply chain resilience (SCR) towards long-term environmental sustainability amendments, the use of emerging technologies such as Blockchain Technology (BCT) can be adopted as an innovative tool to enhance the sustainability and resilience of supply chains, especially in uncertain environments. Drawing on the Knowledge-Based View (KBV) and Dynamic Capability View (DCV), this research aims to demonstrate how the adoption of BCT can enhance the environmental supply chain performance (SCP). A total of 603 valid surveys were collected from respondents from manufacturing and service organizations in Egypt. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modelling, and results revealed that BCT adoption alone had a negative direct impact on environmental SCP. However, when this relationship was mediated by SCR and sequentially mediated by customer integration and green customer information sharing, the results were positive. This research presents insights on how organizations can adapt to dynamic business environments, and, in addition, it extends the theories of KBV and DCV in an empirical contribution by filling the gap in understanding regarding how environmental SCP can be enhanced through the adoption of BCT.

Ala Abdulsalam Alarood, Adamu Abubakar, Abdulrahman Alzahrani, Faisal S. Alsubaei

The adoption of recycling and proper disposal techniques for electronic waste is crucial in advancing sustainable development. The traditional approaches of motivating people for collection of electronic waste are often insufficient due to inadequate methods reaching out, given incentives, calculating appropriate incentives associate to the task of gathering the electronic waste and a lack of transparency in the entire process. Insufficient collection of electronic waste could result in the release of numerous harmful substances into the environment. Prior research studies have been carried out to tackle the issue of electronic waste management in a broad sense. The findings of those studies indicated diverse strategies, each of which is relevant solely to a restricted range of electronic waste reprocessing circumstances. The current study has presented a proposed technique for incentivizing tasks and activities associated to collection of electronic waste through the adoption of vector space technique. Blockchain smart contact technology, has been used to implemented the strategy. The method used involves various well defined mapping of tasks, nature of activities, and their magnitude in order to derived an incentive. Some scenarios for the calculations of incentives are presented, and the findings reveals the based case is by utilizing weighting scale scheme where each tasks and activities are mapped to its associated inventive rather than providing fixed incentive values. Ethereum was used as digital token for each unit of incentive. This concept has contributed in encouraging personal accountability in the management of e-waste collection in order to cultivate sustainable behaviors for a long term solution.

Kalpana Tyagi

Abstract This article presents a holistic and integrated framework for blockchain deployment in global Agro-food ‘supply’ chains and how to transition them to accountable and sustainable global ‘value’ chains. Though many a scholarly contributions have assessed blockchain implementation at various levels in the chain, this research holistically looks at impediments to blockchain implementation at each level in the value chain. The study first establishes interlinkages between the three United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely food for all (SDG 2), health for all (SDG 3), and sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12). It assesses the legal framework (namely trade law) and regulatory requirements therein. It then employs a case-study-based approach to assess blockchain deployment from the lens of operations management. These inter-disciplinary insights offer an enabling framework to successfully implement a vertically-integrated blockchain across the entire global Agro-food value chain. An end-to-end blockchain promises accountability, and thereby, enhanced trust in trade by offering a time-stamped ledger of transactions from the farm to the fork, to the end consumer. This systematic study, and its findings therein, are expected to serve as a ready reference guide to managers and policymakers for a truly integrated farm-to-fork blockchain deployment.

Josepha Witt, Mareike Schoop

Abstract In electronic business (e-business), innovative technologies such as blockchain technology (BCT) have a fundamental impact on activities along the value chain. The perspective of the value chain in the context of blockchain technology has been explored, but contributions are mainly focused on supply chain management and tangible goods. Hence, the e-business domain lacks research, even though many beneficial features for service value chains and the transaction of intangible goods exist. Therefore, the current paper focuses on (1) how and why value chain activities are supported by using BCT and (2) how the stakeholder’s responsibilities change for value chain activities that are affected by BCT. A multiple case analysis of four e-business cases, i.e., Theta, OpenBazaar, Presearch, and Crypviser, is conducted. Based on four ideal value chains by Wirtz (2019) (cf. 4C-Net Model), steps that depend on BCT or that are supported by BCT are outlined. By conducting a cross-case analysis, we derive eight blockchain technology propositions that enlarge the existing knowledge base.

Chandramohan Dhasarathan, Mohammad Kamrul Hasan, Shayla Islam, Salwani Abdullah · 8 authors

Abstract This research focuses on addressing the privacy issues in healthcare advancement monitoring with the rapid establishment of the decentralised communication system in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). An integrated blockchain homomorphic encryption standard with an in‐build supervised learning‐based smart contract is designed to improvise personal data prevention. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has advanced in healthcare with the rapid establishment of decentralised communication systems. Distributed ledgers have resource constraints to leverage public, private, and hybrid blockchain transactions to facilitate heterogeneous operations. The authors propose a supervised learning strategy in healthcare to mitigate learning health‐related issues, improvise clinical monitoring, and ensure secure communication. The proposed approach handles the vast IoMT data by adopting blockchain for IoMT as (BIoMT) to preserve sensitive clinical information. It incorporates hybrid encryption techniques to improve patient and health records' privacy protection. BIoMT also maintains secured and sustainable supply chain management with a highly confidential decentralised framework using blockchain‐based smart contracts, which minimises data loss. Moreover, a framework is designed with a hybrid hashing that integrates a homomorphically encrypted algorithm to support a smart contract for decentralised applicability. The BIoMT approach is tested and compared with the relevant prevention mechanisms. The evaluation shows that the effects observed from the result analysis noted that the proposed method outperforms reliable prevention mechanisms compared to the existing approaches.

Tejas Potnis, Yui‐yip Lau, Tsz Leung Yip

Blockchain technology is a major innovation that has swept through global supply chains recently. Blockchain technology has received immense attention in the supply chain industry due to its promising capabilities. This study was conducted to evaluate the potential capabilities of blockchain technology, which are highly relevant to the supply chain industry. To improve the understanding of the effect of blockchain on the supply chain, this research focuses on two crucial aspects of supply chain management, namely, supply chain capabilities and flexibility. The research procures measuring items for blockchain characteristics, supply chain capabilities, and flexibility through a questionnaire, the previous literature, and interviews conducted with industry experts. Through the use of statistical analysis, this study identifies the relationship between the above variables. The effect of blockchain on each variable is examined using a simple linear regression model. The findings disclose that blockchain technology has generated a notable impact on the supply chain capabilities and supply chain flexibility of firms. This makes blockchain technology highly essential for firms to generate a competitive advantage in the market and develop a new set of capabilities ahead of their competitors.

Chiara Acciarini, Francesco Cappa, Giovanni Costanzo, Martina Prisco · 7 authors

Blockchain technology is continuing to spread in many sectors, including the food industry, which has begun to embrace it in order to face new transformative trends. Indeed, since it is based on distributed ledgers and the encryption of stored data, blockchains may provide greater security for information delivered. It is still unclear what effects the use of blockchains has on customer behavior in the food sector. Consequently, our analyses tested the impact that blockchains have on customer purchase intentions in the food sector. Our results show that information provided to customers about the use of a blockchain to protect information throughout the supply chain can positively influence their purchase intentions. This study, consequently, offers new insights into the benefits generated by blockchains in the food sector and contributes to scientific understanding of the phenomenon overall. Moreover, our results provide insights that are also useful for managers and policymakers to further spread the use of blockchains.

Simon Wong, John Yeung, Yui‐yip Lau, Tomoya Kawasaki

In the last six years, there has been a rise in research interest with regard to the applications of blockchain technology in supply chains and how these applications bring benefits to supply chain management. In a broader sense, an essential research focus that has been discussed in the literature is the way in which this emerging blockchain technology in supply chains brings sustainable benefits to a community. The rationale for incorporating cloud technology into a blockchain and integrating the blockchain with machine learning for supply chain applications is to maintain technical sustainability. While previous studies suggested and reported sustainable practices of applying blockchain technology in supply chains, the means with which these practices are brought about by the cloud-based blockchain integrated with machine learning (CBML) have not been thoroughly explored in the literature. The case study presented in this paper aims to fill this gap by exploring technically, environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable practices through the use cases of CBML for supply chain management by the international leading container shipping company Maersk. The use cases by Maersk presented in published documents were collected from the Internet and then analyzed. This document analysis was performed in two ways. The first way was a technical review of the blockchain technology used by Maersk with a consideration of technical sustainability to ensure scalability and big data analytics. The other way was to analyze the applications of the CBML by Maersk to indicate how environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability can be achieved. On the other hand, this paper also highlights the negative technical, environmental, economic, and social sustainability impacts caused by Maersk and discusses implications for future research directions.

Xingfen Liu, Zhongbao Zhou, Feimin Zhong, Jianmai Shi

Abstract Blockchain technology is commonly used in many industries. One current application is that providing supply chain transparency, sellers can disclose product information to consumers for authentication and certification. To examine the supply chain blockchain based transparency‐level strategy and its interact with different refund policies, in a two‐echelon supply chain, we consider a supplier decides on the transparency level and wholesale price, and a retailer decides on retail price and provides full refund (policy F), or partial refund (policy P), or no refund (policy N) policy to consumers. We find the refund policy choice and the transparency‐level strategy have a mutual influence. A lenient refund policy (a higher refund) can generate more demand, which makes the supplier to provide a high transparency level, whereas a high consumer's transparency awareness also promotes the retailer to choose a more lenient refund policy. We find Pareto improvement exists under a cost‐sharing strategy, and the retailer is willing to share part of the adoption cost only when the efficiency of improving the transparency level is moderate. Otherwise, the retailer adopts blockchain technology only when there is no cost sharing. Further, different shipping cost bearers can change the sensitivity of refund policy choice, and the supplier prefers to provide a high transparency level when the retailer covers the shipping cost. When the retailer becomes more socially responsible, the supplier is more willing to provide a higher transparency level, and the retailer is more willing to provide a partial refund policy.

Nidhi Yadav, Sunil Luthra, Dixit Garg

No abstract is available for this record.

Jinyu Wei, Xiuping Yi, Xin Yang, Yaoxi Liu

In the context of “double carbon”, constructing green supply chains is the only way to implement sustainable development strategies in the manufacturing industry. This paper, therefore, examines the manufacturing supply chain for low-carbon products. More recently, the lack of technical information flow due to data barriers up and down the supply chain has led to high energy consumption, the serious waste of raw materials, and the substandard production of green products. Therefore, the level of supply chain data governance must be improved to enhance the sustainability of the supply chain. By studying blockchain-based data governance and government policy incentives for manufacturing supply chains, this study constructed an evolutionary game model based on prospect theory for the tripartite relation of government, manufacturers, and retailers. The difference between the perceived and actual value was introduced into a three-way evolutionary game model based on prospect theory to optimize the practical implications of the model. The model was then simulated using system dynamics. Through the simulation, it could be concluded that the ability of the three-way evolutionary game to reach the optimal stability point is only related to the sensitivity of the retailer’s perceived value. Additionally, the outcome of the three-way evolutionary game can be unstable, with changes in perceived value sensitivity. Finally, relevant policy recommendations are made. The innovation of this study is establishing a data governance platform that uses data governance to build green supply chains. Additionally, the government was added to the subjects of the game to explore the role of government policy in data governance and sustainable development. In addition, the evolutionary game model was incorporated with prospect theory and traditional expected utility theory, and the rational deficits and preferences of decision makers were taken into account, which brings the results closer to the reality of the situation.

Basim Aljabhan, Muath Obaidat

The fierce competition in international markets and the rapid advancements in information technology result in shorter lead times, lower transportation capacity, and higher demand. The supply chain network is one of the most crucial areas of concentration in the majority of business circumstances. Blockchain technology is a promising option for safe information exchange in the supply chain network. Although preserving security at every level of the blockchain is somewhat important, cryptographic methodologies are frequently used in the existing works. The novel perceptive craving game search (PCGS) optimization algorithm is used to optimally generate the key for data sanitization, which assures the privacy of logistics data. Here, the original logistics data obtained from the manufacturer is sanitized with an optimal key generated by using the PCGS optimization algorithm, avoiding the risk of unauthorized access and data swarm that causes the system to lag. Moreover, the sanitized data obtained from the manufacturer is transmitted to the allowed parties via different sub-chains. The same generated key is used on the receiving customer side for reconstructing the original information from the sanitized data. The performance and results of the proposed blockchain-based privacy preservation model are validated using various parameters.

Anqi Wang, Lianmei Zhu, Huanan Sun, Shali Wang · 5 authors

In the context of accelerating economic transformation and upgrading, and comprehensively promoting the construction of digital China and ecological civilization in China, this paper uses text mining and OLS to quantitatively study the relationship between fiscal decentralization, enterprise digital transformation and green innovation in 31 provinces from 2011 to 2021. This study finds that fiscal decentralization will promote enterprise green innovation and digital transformation, and that digital transformation has a partial mediating effect between fiscal decentralization and enterprise green innovation. Furthermore, this expansive study finds that fiscal decentralization has a positive role in promoting the green innovation of heterogeneous enterprises and enterprises in different regions, among which its promotion effect on state-owned enterprises is higher than that of private enterprises, and its promotion effect on enterprises in the central and western regions is higher than that of enterprises in the eastern region. Moreover, an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between fiscal decentralization and the green innovation of enterprise. In addition, financing constraints have a masking effect between fiscal decentralization and green innovation in enterprise and green innovation significantly promotes enterprise environmental, social and governance (ESG) development.

Chuangneng Cai, Xiancheng Hao, Kui Wang, Xuebing Dong

Globalization has prompted enterprises worldwide to increasingly seek the optimal supply chain configuration. However, outsourcing, shortened product life cycles, and a reduced supply base severely weaken supply chain risk tolerance. With the emergence of blockchain, enterprises see an opportunity to mitigate supply chain risks. The purpose of our research is to explore supply chain managers’ intention to adopt blockchain technology from the perspective of supply chain risk management. Using a survey sample of 203 managers in China and the USA, we explored the impact of four perceived benefits of blockchain technology on supply chain risk resistance by extending the technology acceptance model. The results show that the traceability, transparency, information sharing, and decentralization of blockchain can enhance the perceived usefulness of blockchain in supply chain resilience and responsiveness, and the ability to withstand disruption risks and supply and demand coordination risks encountered in the supply chain, thus promoting the adoption of the technology. In addition, the relationships between supply chain resilience and blockchain technology adoption and between supply chain responsiveness and blockchain technology adoption are more salient for managers with high levels of uncertainty avoidance.

Wei Guan, Wenhong Ding, Bobo Zhang, Jérôme Verny · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.