Blockchain and Supply Chain: Paradoxes of Affordance and Actualisation

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the organisational reasons and explanations limiting the emergence and adoption of blockchain technology in supply chain. The study is motivated by a desire to explore and understand the ways in which new digital technologies are influencing the future of supply chains. The organisational reasons and explanations for limited adoption were explored by interviewing technology and supply chain executives engaged in technology and supply chain strategy for their organisations. These were organisations across logistics, food and pharmaceutical sectors where the potential value of blockchain has been widely recognised in the literature. A retroductive grounded theory was used to identify blockchain affordances and problems of actualisation and explain the emergence of adoption of blockchain technology. A period of fieldwork began in 2018 by analysing discourses in the business media since 2013 and attending conference presentations and discussions. The study was interrupted for a year in 2020 by CoVid-19 pandemic and the critical nature of researcher’s employment in the NHS supply chain. An earlier introduction to the technology made it possible to conduct 20 interviews across 2021 and 2022. Subsequently, a qualitative analysis, of the data collected, was undertaken as the basis from which to explore and explain why blockchain technology has not gained much traction in supply chain. There are five paradoxes between affordance and actualisation which explain why blockchain technology has not moved far beyond pilot studies and proof of concept stages. These are presently persisting contradictions, between interrelated social material and elements and choices or options for organisations. These paradoxical choices and elements are currently rendering the commercial adoption of blockchain technology as virtually non-existent in supply chain. Paradoxical dilemmas for organisations exist, where there are competing choices for organisations, between short and long term goals, performance and capability, exploitation or exploration, mediation or disintermediation and leading or following the development of new technology. The choices, currently being made, reflect an “either, or” approach and appear currently in favour of those choices limiting the emergence and adoption of blockchain. This is as organisations seek to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity and anxiety. There are also dialectic tensions where interlocking social and material elements, constituting the performance of validation, consensus and disintermediation, are both interrelated and in contradiction. These dialectic tensions are between autonomy and interdependence, accessibility and accountability, local and global, proven and unproven technologies, processes and practices and between the low cost of disintermediation and high trust in mediation. These dialectic tensions are currently without acceptance, resolution, synthesis and again create inertia. Recommendations for practice are to adopt a “both, and” approach to paradoxical choices and dialectic tensions. This research is a departure from those studies which seek to advocate a one best way of approaching technology and organisation. The study adopts lenses of sociomateriality and paradox and builds upon theories of affordance and actualisation theory to explain new technology emergence and adoption. This study concludes that blockchain does have the potential to transform supply chains but that potential is extremely difficult to unlock at the scale initially envisaged during the emergence of blockchain technology in supply chain in 2017. For the trajectory of the technology to change organisations will need to change their approach to the paradoxical dilemmas and tensions that reside in blockchain technology and supply chain.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	John Hassard (Supervisor)