Improving operational efficiency and effectiveness through blockchain technology

Introduction

Blockchain technology has emerged as a tool to help multiple stakeholders contribute to operations, production planning and control, and supply chain management—just to name a few areas relevant to the readership of Production Planning & Control. The focus is no longer on a single individual, department, or even organization, that has a relatively direct role in observing and managing organizational and supply chain operations. Blockchain has been integrated and has become a common element of the Industry 4.0 technology package of technologies and discourse (Govindan et al. 2024). Each Industry 4.0 topic—or buzzword—has taken on a life of their own. Yet, we do believe that the concepts have a way of potentially, if not actually, helping organizations and partners improve on their operational efficiency and effectiveness—and blockchain technology needs to rise above the hype and deliver on its promise (Tse et al. 2023).

Why has blockchain increased in importance and discourse amongst researchers and practitioners? One reason we posit is that industrial systems have necessarily become more complex. No longer are organizations and departments focusing on the reductionist viewpoint of just making sure our machines are scheduled efficiently and optimization our sequence of product flows—these are still critical issues—but these decisions need to be carefully and immediately integrated with the much broader supply chain. The supply chain may involve multiple tiers deep into the global forest of networks that deliver to the organization that will transform or consume the material or good. These materials and goods now have implications beyond direct producers and consumers (Pinheiro et al. 2022). Once, again the stakeholder sphere has expanded from early materials extraction to end-of-life and circular systems.

The impacts of decisions and information deep into the global supply chain have traditionally been hidden from the operations manager on the shopfloor—managers whose major worries have traditionally been about whether they have too much or not enough materials and capacity. Having this extended external supply chain and operational information—or at least the information that is valuable for them to make decisions—at a moment’s notice and at their fingertips can go a long way to aiding them in making these operational decisions (Budler, Quiroga, and Trkman 2024). This information has to be trusted. Thus, not only are there vertical supply chain concerns, but vertical hierarchical managerial concerns that may require that this data and information be available to longer-term planners.

Additionally, operations and production planners have to deal with global complexity (Roh, Hong, and Min 2014). This complexity continues to increase in material and information flows and process technology to manage in this environment.

Blockchain technology and industry 4.0—which include the internet-of-things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), radio-frequency identification (RFID), cyber-physical systems, and global positioning systems (GPS)—provide an ecosystem for production planning and control that has expanded over the years (Gangwani et al. 2023). Keeping updated on the complexities of these technologies, their related applications, their interactions, and how they may be integrated is a daunting task from shopfloor personnel to the boardroom.

Alternatively, even with multiple concerns these pervasive systems and technologies offer significant beneficial opportunities to managers, organizations, their supply chains, and stakeholders. It is for this reason we further our understanding of this field and especially how the blockchain fits within at least, the technological ecosystem.

We distributed the original call for papers for this special issue without realizing that our world will encounter a generational transformation from a worldwide pandemic—the COVID crisis. The thinking emerging from this globally transformative event not only confirmed the complexity of industrial systems but additionally that our industrial systems are not isolated from social concerns (Chen et al. 2023). The COVID crisis also amplified the complications of our supply chains and industrial systems as sustainability and variations in individual and organizational work-life activities emerged.

The research community—including blockchain and technology management—sought answers and provided some solutions (e.g. Nandi et al. 2021a, 2021b). These new insights are still occurring as additional research is continuing. The COVID crisis was an immediate and punctuated disturbance. But there will always be many other industrial, social, and environmental disruptions. There are new technologies, conflicts, and climate change or biodiversity events that may occur over longer periods and last longer that cause disruptions. Blockchain technology is a potentially important technological disruption that still ‘has legs’ even years after it initially made a splash as a tool for operations and supply chain management.

In our evaluation when seeking to introduce a special issue around blockchain technology to support operational excellence and effectiveness we had a concern. The concern involved whether we could actually find operating blockchains with significant enough results to determine the impact. A related concern was whether management and organizations found it to be important for them to include blockchain in their operational and strategic planning. The literature has been full of hype—and the hype, we must admit, still remains. But given the existence of the smoke of hype we believe that there is a fire of practical operational activities and performance lying underneath. We sought to identify how hot this fire burns in terms of contributing further to organizational and supply chain operational excellence and effectiveness.

We return to how the contributors of this special issue address these concerns later. Initially let us introduce some of the concepts and considerations we sought for this special issue.

Blockchain technology and its capabilities

Blockchain technology can incorporate various stakeholders, have multiple objectives and applications. Even the same blockchain can support various operational practices and technologies, and further support relationships amongst entities (Bai and Sarkis 2020). It can support transactional tracking, tracing, and verifying inventory, purchases, invoices, bills of lading, deliveries, and receipts—just to name a few specific informational, material, and capital flows. This tracing and verification can be utilized for several reasons—financial, scheduling, legal, marketing, and reputational concerns.

The advent of distributed ledger technology and blockchains has been viewed as a panacea for addressing these challenges. The emergent technology can potentially achieve substantial cost and efficiency benefits while alleviating difficulties associated with reconciliation, miscommunication, and poor contract enforcement. These are the promises.

Additional capabilities from blockchain platforms can also be promising. Included, beyond the much-heralded traceability capability, includes the related transparency of flows along the supply chain and in internal operations. This transparency allows for planning and decision support internally, but also for building trust across the supply chain and for customers and other stakeholders (e.g. see Singh and Sharma 2023).

Blockchain technology is a central technology in the latest round of technological innovation and industrial transformation for operations, production, and supply chains. Various efforts to lead the race for development in the industry are occurring—across industries and regions. Worldwide, the deployment of blockchain technology in various applications has seen increased interest; ranging from a leapfrogging technology for developing countries to unprecedented transparency opportunities in developed countries and their supply chains. Yet, many questions remain. Whether or how these blockchain applications can effectively directly or indirectly affect the operational performance of industrial systems is a core investigatory question (Saberi et al. 2019). The promise and resarch is moderated by a variety of barriers; technological, organizational, regulatory, and economic (Kouhizadeh, Saberi, and Sarkis 2021).

The industry has initiated various industrial applications—grid transactions, financing, and transparency in supply chains. The applications and creativity associated with them have grown. Over the years, most industries have experienced rapid innovation—for example, consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace, pharmaceutical, and logistics. Research to promote and deeply integrate blockchain technology within various industrial systems is occurring, with an ultimate goal to achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Operational excellence is a broad term and may include cost, quality, time, innovation, relationships, and flexibility. Operational efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved through data sharing, optimizing business processes with smart contracts, reduce operating costs, enhanced security and efficiency, improve collaborative efficiency, and building a trustless system. Operational problems, such as communication errors with internal and external partners, risk management, and governmental regulatory supervision can be mitigated. This efficiency can go beyond business, into the realm of social and sustainability dimensions.

Blockchain applications can play a larger role in improving operational efficiency and effectiveness while advancing economic and social development. More investigation, based on practice, can be made to strengthen basic research on how to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness through those blockchain applications; and whether it is even necessary or possible. Managers and practitioners can benefit from theoretical contributions and innovative business frameworks for adopting blockchain applications, especially when seeking to upscale operational activities and performance.

Blockchain consideration and adoption is occurring across broader industrial systems and is closely related to evolving technological solutions enabling new forms of production inside the firms, novel models of logistics external to organizations as well as new relationships between the firm, its partners, and the market. Firms are now exploring the application of blockchains to cope with industrial challenges and to sustain their competitive advantages. The advantages of this platform contribute to building a competitive environment for meta-organizations (Kretschmer et al. 2022).

To reap the benefits of this digital platform revolution, even country-level policies have been adopted. For example, the Chinese government has made an announcement to introduce policy that encourages blockchain application. However, implementing a blockchain will be an incremental journey over several years that will include changing the existing operation mode to integrate legacy and emergent industrial ecosystems and technologies. Therefore, at this stage, we need to collect real cases, practical experience, summarize this experience, and identify existing problems to support better applications and develop blockchain standards in the future.

It is critical to advance the understanding of the joint evolution of blockchain applications and operational excellence issues and their relationships. The development of blockchain applications in supporting the transitioning of organizations and industries and upscaling to broader operational performance and its many dimensions is needed. It is necessary to understand issues ranging from what the blockchain in operation concept represents, to the challenges, benefits, and ways to implement blockchain applications to gain operational efficiency and effectiveness.

We made a broad-based call for quality studies relating to theoretical and empirical works, such as survey studies; but be ingrained in practice. State-of-the-art requirements, fundamental theories, frameworks, case studies/stories, field experiences, standardization efforts, regulatory activities, education, and training innovations were all welcomed. All industry application areas were also welcomed: aeronautics and astronautics, agriculture, automotive, building, construction, energy, finance, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, process industry, power, and transportation. The research and practitioner community responded with dozens of submissions.

We now review some of the publication contributions made to this special issue and identify common and unique characteristics. The special issue contains ten articles that were rigorously reviewed. We thank the contributors for bearing with us as some works required several revisions. The special issue contains high quality results with implications for research and practice well outlined in each publication.

Overview of special issue content

We begin with a broader issue set of concerns using a literature review and development of a taxonomy by Jackson, Spiegler, and Kotiadis (2024). In their review of the literature, the authors specifically considered various blockchain-based application themes (and capabilities) and relate them to types of Lean Waste resulting in efficiency reduction. The relationship to performance and outcomes of efficiency from the adoption and study of blockchain. This work that researchers and their studies show support for the basic premise of this special issue—blockchain is meant to support operational efficiency and effectiveness.

This first paper shows that holistic lean waste is mostly focused on operational waste (there are seven other wastes included). Operational waste and information waste were both addressed significantly. The information waste—efficiencies in information management and processing—is not surprising. The emphasis on operational efficiency is surprising—that blockchain was meant for operational improvements in transactions and activities.

Although the operational efficiency was shown to be affected, the authors argued that at least six additional efficiency (waste reduction) areas could use significantly more investigation. A surprising result given that environmental concerns in the supply chain (green and lean) were not as effectively investigated from a waste reduction perspective. Interestingly, in the Jackson, Spiegler, and Kotiadis (2024) review the authors mention the use of blockchain investigation for services and minimization of waste as a need for future research. This observation is appropriate because two publications in this special issue focus on general services and the consulting industry (which is primarily a services industry). We will overview these papers later in this introduction to the special issue.

Blockchain implementations for organizations and operations have usually considered supply chain management concerns—considering the extra-organizational qualities and capabilities of blockchain are especially prevalent. The next special issue paper—by Xu and He (2024)—addresses logistics function concerns. The logistics function can include internal and external activities and partners including transporters, warehousing, and distributors. The role of blockchain in logistics information sharing is introduced.

The paper addresses three foundational dimensions and topics including logistics and supply chain finance, tracking, and collaboration. A deductive analysis completed by the authors relied on secondary research from the literature and a summary of findings. The authors supplemented these deductive results with an inductive study of three case studies. The first case study of Maersk and IBM through its TradeLens program was a milestone in blockchain application in cross-border logistics and efficiency building in international trade. Unfortunately, not long after this paper was written, TradeLens was discontinued—which brings into question some of the issues for future blockchain applications (e.g. see van Haaren et al. 2023 on the major sins of blockchain governance).

Another logistics information sharing case was between DHL and Accenture who introduced it into drug tracking to limit counterfeit and illegal drug trade. In terms of efficiency evaluation, they found that the blockchain (through simulation) could handle over seven billion unique drug serial numbers, with over 1500 transactions per second. This level of transaction directly addresses one of the concerns of blockchain and its scalability to large data flows (Zhou et al. 2020).

The final logistics case shifts to the agriculture industry—one of the most common industries for the application of blockchain technology—with a focus on supply chain finance through Grainchain. Accuracy in exchange for payment is one of the difficulties faced in the global supply chain. Supply chain finance information through smart contracts development makes it an accurate and efficient way to transform payment funds. We return to the issue of supply chain finance in a later paper in this special issue authored by Gong et al. (2024).

Xu and He (2024) identify many challenges and directions for future development. They clearly state the fact that not all activities and processes are appropriate for blockchain and care should be taken in targeting use cases and applications. Matching appropriate use cases will influence operational efficiency and effectiveness. Careful analysis and evaluation need to be carefully completed—poor choices can lead to failure. As blockchain technology becomes more prevalent and mature identifying the characteristics of use cases that have the greatest success will be important to study.

Sauer, Orzes, and Culot (2024) is the third paper in this special issue. Similar to the previous paper the authors of this work investigate multiple case studies. In their research study, they arrive at four distinct setups for supply chain blockchain applications using the traceability capability, needs, and focus. The distinction is important given that previous work in this special issue had just focused on a unidimensional characteristic of traceability. This additional nuance in at least one capability can make the difference between effective and ineffective or efficient and inefficient blockchain applications for operational purposes.

A second and major conclusion is the relative infancy of blockchain in the supply chain. From amongst their case study organizations Sauer, Orzes, and Culot (2024) observe that none of the cases was fully able to utilize their blockchains beyond the dyad (immediate supplier)—although the literature and many articles in this special issue tout the multi-tier aspect of blockchain application potential. A major conclusion is that a limitation to operational effectiveness exists when blockchain has limited application to only dyadic relationships; not fully taking advantage of the full traceability capabilities. The authors do present significant propositions that require additional research and investigation. These propositions show that more work is needed just based on their newly defined multidimensional blockchain capability of traceability.

One of the interesting findings is that the six case companies in the Sauer, Orzes, and Culot (2024) study were overburdened with requests for learning about their blockchain operations. This finding points to the lack of exemplary organizations and the diffusion of blockchain technology across industries. This lack of diffusion remains an issue and why barriers and challenges seem to be a common theme in most blockchain articles (e.g. Kouhizadeh, Saberi, and Sarkis 2021). This finding may be concerning given that limited applications mean many studies may be getting the same respondents and same cases—this may not be an issue in the future if blockchain diffusion continues.

The first three studies in this special issue result in frameworks or propositions after investigation. Xu et al. (2024) begin with the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework for their investigation of blockchains for the German Automotive Industry. Unlike the first three articles, they investigate a specific region and industry—making for a more controlled set of case studies allowing the authors to eliminate some exogenous factors.

Three major automotive industry companies were targeted with a Delphi approach used to evaluate these companies and blockchain technology. The study was relatively rigorous in who they interviewed and focused on company blockchain or industry blockchain experts who worked with these companies. The barriers included several standard barriers including technological immaturity, regulatory standards, and other factors. An intriguingly titled barrier is the bootstrap problem—related to a lack of mimetic activity [adoption of by other competitors or partners (Kouhizadeh, Zhu, and Sarkis 2020)] from industry to adopt blockchain technology. This challenge raises an interesting question related to the need for a critical mass of adopters for blockchain to effectively diffuse. Although the authors don’t theoretically get into this issue, the bootstrapping challenge is similar to Rohlfs (1974) networks theory where a critical mass of users is needed for greater diffusion of platform technology—such as telecommunications. This effectiveness issue is an industry level concern.

Related to the theme of this special issue, the resulting propositions from Xu et al. (2024) include the belief that operational efficiencies will result from blockchain adoption—but this outcome and evaluation can be biased by the study respondent positions who were primarily champions or developers of blockchain technology. Although the study showed continued concern with overcoming barriers and challenges—a positive outlook on blockchain’s contribution to operational efficiency and effectiveness potential was maintained.

Naef, Wagner, and Saur (2024) directly seek to address this question of the potential to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness through blockchain technology while overcoming the many barriers that have been thoroughly researched. A critical aspect of applying blockchain technology in practical settings is the tension between centralized leadership for supply chain related blockchain applications vs. the decreased decentralized control and governance assumptions of blockchain operations.

The article uses five live case studies (at the time of the writing of this article each use case was operating in a practical setting) to consider how collaborators are dealing with this tension. The authors consider three types of governance: (1) control from a single company directly involved and leading operations of the supply through blockchain; (2) a network administrative organization that serves as the manager of the system rather than a user; and (3) no leader, with the platform open to a general public (e.g. Bitcoin).

The authors provide a perspective missing from many blockchain articles—the type of organizational structure for each platform (e.g. see Ipert and Mauer 2023, as another unique example) including characteristics of the management team, board, general assembly, and working groups that govern the blockchain.

A major finding of Naef, Wagner, and Saur (2024) is that blockchain collaborations evolve over time. Different governance aspects occur over this life cycle evolution. This evolution will have operational efficiency and effectiveness implications—where learning is likely to occur and established as a core issue as evidenced in the title of the paper. Another major finding is that none of the cases—also a characteristic of many of the cases in this special issue—have not yet reached maturity. An innovative, and counterintuitive perspective does arise. Specifically, as the blockchain and administration matures it becomes more simplified and less complex as learning continues. This issue of simplification may be a core secret to adoption, but also to improving operational efficiencies and effectiveness—given that it can also help simplify operational and supply chain interactions (Lumineau et al. 2021).

The next three articles in this special issue shift focus to relatively less understood use cases and industries—clothing, consulting, and general service industries. We’ll go through each of these identifying how blockchain incorporates multiple stakeholders but also relates to operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Clothing and the textile industry greatly influence global environmental and social sustainability. This industry has many ethical concerns, such as sweatshops and unsafe conditions in addition to environmental concerns, such as pollutants, land depletion, and water usage. Benstead et al. (2024) consider the operational efficiency from a triple-bottom-line perspective seeking to understand the impact of blockchain on these three dimensions of sustainability. Their study considers three clothing blockchains across three different countries—although the studies are all located in European countries and may be unique to that region.

The authors arrive at four major research propositions based on an inductive analysis of their case studies. Their findings support the contention that benefits are likely to accrue across all sustainability dimensions. Of particular importance to this special issue’s theme appears in their profit dimension. The blockchain platform respondents (owners) argue for business case to be made so suppliers buy into the decision to adopt blockchain. The major efficiency and effectiveness argument is related to their term of network synergy. Network synergy results from communication efficiencies and information exchanges resulting in quick action and response. Major operational efficiencies arise from making sure paperwork is completed quickly and easily across the supply chain.

According to Benstead et al. (2024), another major characteristic that was especially important for blockchain efficiency and effectiveness is its integration with other technologies. The authors made this point by observing the need to integrate other Industry 4.0 technology for furthering the effectiveness of blockchain. A major challenge that remains is that it is difficult for these technologies to talk to each other because of a lack of standards and capabilities to link these technologies.

Their major proposition related to blockchain operational efficiency was based on the profit or business dimensions. The final result of this article’s study is a three-dimensional cube that links the propositions. The framework includes dimensions of the triple bottom line, blockchain and other technology, and adoption and implementation planning. The propositions and the framework cube, although based on fashion industry cases, have implications for cross-industry and use case applications of blockchain research and investigation—a major contribution of this work.

There are many stakeholders involved in making the blockchain ecosystem successful and effective (e.g. Tiwari et al. 2023). We have discussed some stakeholder groupings in this special issue introduction. Stakeholders are typically assumed to be companies seeking to develop, adopt, or use the blockchain. Many of these stakeholders are supply chain members. An interesting and underrepresented group of stakeholders are consultants—whose role is to aid organizations plan, adopt, implement, and maintain blockchains.

Consultant stakeholders are the focus of the next paper in this special issue—authored by Laaraj, Nakara, and Fosso Wamba (2024). Consultants directly ensure blockchain implementations are effective and improve operational efficiency by overcoming hurdles and supporting continuous improvement. They also serve the role as diffusers of technology. As discussed elsewhere in this special issue, the more effective and efficient platforms (based on network economics; and mimetic activity) require greater blockchain platform diffusion and increased number of participants. Consultants can aid in this diffusion by increasing the participation of other stakeholders.

An unexpected finding of this article is the issue of ethics as a blockchain technology challenge. Ethics is rarely discussed as a major challenge especially when considering the operational aspects of the blockchain. Consultants viewed ethics as a major concern and can affect efficiency concerns. Overall, this study found that consultants can also play important roles of institutional entrepreneurs (change agents) to help in the transition process.

With these results, it may be time to reconsider the relative importance of consultants as technology pioneers. Evidence in this study shows that they are critical for blockchain diffusion and operational effectiveness. But care should be taken from these initial results. These findings may be due to bias of the sample mostly composed of consulting firms and developers (who serve as technology development consultants). Clearly, multiple stakeholder perspectives on how other stakeholders’ roles are perceived is an interesting direction for future research. What is clear is that consultants should be included in future blockchain stakeholder studies.

Chaudhuri et al. (2024) in the eighth paper of this special issue explicitly and directly evaluate operational efficiency and effectiveness by considering both transaction time reduction and quality improvement in supply chains. It is assumed that supply chain efficiencies will benefit all supply chain partners, especially the eventual end customer or consumer. They specifically investigate how the social and technical capabilities of blockchain can support the two major operational efficiency measures.

In this article, Chaudhuri et al. (2024) investigate service providers who help clients implement blockchain for use. Similar to the consultants studied by Laaraj, Nakara, and Fosso Wamba (2024), these service providers helped develop and transition companies for blockchain. In this study’s investigation, they specifically rely on two theoretical lenses including socio-technical systems (STS) and task-technology fit (TTF) theoretical frameworks (although the authors of this article call TTF an analysis approach).

STS focuses on the linkages and synergies between social and technical measures associated with technology or programmatic adoption. The authors argue that both social and technical systems working together can provide synergies from both STS dimensions. The concept is associated with when more than one program (dimension) is implemented resulting in synergies. This synergistic and technological fit concept is central to complementarity theory within organization and adoption of innovations (Milgrom and Roberts 1995).

Chaudhuri et al. (2024) identify three major supply chain operational inefficiencies—which they call wastages—including waiting time, excess processing, and rejects and quality disputes. These were each mentioned by the respondents and explained how blockchain technology can address them to address quality and time concerns. Similar to several other papers in this special issue, they identify transparency, immutability, programmability (automated smart contracts), and cyber security as major blockchain capabilities that can address these inefficiencies. They exemplify how each was addressed across the case studies.

Eventually, social capability constructs (e.g. customer communication and stakeholder management) are linked to technical capabilities (e.g. data tracking systems) that can result in transaction time and quality improvements. The final result is a contingent framework (based on TTF) which stipulates that the relationships between the capabilities and the outcomes will be dependent (a task-technology fit) on the project type and phases of the project. The life cycle, or project phases contingency is a similar contingency identified by Naef, Wagner, and Saur (2024) and other contingencies identified by Sauer, Orzes, and Culot (2024) in this special issue. Supply chain logistics and finance efficiencies were also evident from this paper’s cases, further strengthening the observations made in these use applications identified by Gong et al. (2024) and Xu and He (2024)—which happens to be the next paper that appears in this special issue.

Gong et al. (2024) investigate an emergent and important dimension of supply chain and operations management, specifically, they evaluate supply chain finance use cases and how blockchain capabilities can address these use cases. They use a secondary case study approach to investigate four dimensions of supply chain finance—financing range (range of offerings), financing cost, financing efficiency, and risk management.

Financial technology (fintech) has emerged as a major topic in finance, especially in China, the authors consider five different case studies. The cost and efficiency dimensions are especially important and closely related to the other papers in this special issue that speak to financial flow efficiencies and their relationships to operational effectiveness [efficient capital flow allows for efficient material flows (Wuttke, Blome, and Henke 2013)].

The resulting supply chain finance using blockchain technology framework—based on Roger’s diffusion of innovations framework (Rogers 2003)—describes an initiation-implementation model with four major research propositions. They also touch upon stakeholder and orchestration theories to help develop and enhance this framework.

Orchestration of resources is used in restructuring some organizational processes for blockchain. This critical transformation of fitting the organization processes—for eventual routinization—is an insight that is lacking in many studies. This study contributes to the discourse on this important underlying requirement, where orchestration is also needed for supply chain processes.

The large-scale implementation at the end of their theoretical framework—before going into routinization and maturity, which is not fully addressed in their diffusion model—is based on building the network and the number of stakeholders engaged. This finding of increasing participants to arrive at maturity is similar to other papers in this special issue which discuss bootstrapping and mimetic challenge also related to Rohlfs (1974) networks theory (Xu et al. 2024) and how consultants can help build markets for platform diffusion to achieve efficiencies (Laaraj, Nakara, and Fosso Wamba 2024).

The final paper that completes this special issue considers cross-border trade and building operational efficiencies related to logistics. This last paper by Tian et al. (2024) uses a unique field experimental study to investigate if blockchain implementation actually results in improving operational costs and the length of a business cycle (turnaround time and a proxy for operational efficiency). The research team actually developed a blockchain for this purpose and took measurements before and after implementation. Overall, the results did show promise, although under very controlled conditions.

This is one of the few studies to carefully investigate an actual implementation and is not based on case studies of pilot projects. Most of the other studies have focused on respondents in companies that have used or implemented blockchain. It was not clear that data was actually used to prove the results, especially results that directly related to blockchain implementation. The case studies can be subject to various biases of respondents who may be champions of the blockchain projects. In this case, even with the limitations of field experiments, the results were promising for blockchain. The results support the findings of the various case studies that argue for blockchain effectiveness and efficiency.

Summary and future overview

This special issue content provides a snapshot of blockchain understanding and knowledge related to its role in operational efficiency and effectiveness. There are several similarities among the articles, but also some differences exist.

A major consistency throughout are findings and beliefs that operational efficiency and effectiveness are outcomes of blockchain implementation. But, implementation is: (1) not easy with many challenges and barriers that need to be overcome; (2) should consider the context and maturity of implementation; and (3) blockchain is part of a larger ecosystem and should probably be considered with other technologies for better outcomes. The operational efficiency and effectiveness context of implementation means a careful consideration of the industry, product or service type, and stakeholder engagement.

A broad variety of blockchain characteristics and capabilities were considered and included the now accepted capabilities of traceability, transparency, incentivization, and security. Each of these capabilities may contribute together or separately to positive operational outcomes. Given that the system is, foremost, an information and computer technology for multiple organizations and stakeholders, it is not surprising that most outcomes have targeted supply chain operations—and almost exclusively for-profit organizations.

Another overall defining characteristic of the majority of these works is the use of case study analyses. Given that the Production Planning & Control journal focuses on practical and important concerns facing industry, the use of cases and case studies is appropriate. Case studies not only show that organizations are facing these issues, but inductive learning and new theoretical frameworks can evolve. In fact, several ‘middle-range’ theoretical frameworks (Craighead, Ketchen, and Cheng 2016), grounded in various theories were inductively developed. We also had an experimental study to show the results, but this study was in the minority. There are a variety of other methodologies including broad-based empirical studies, simulations, and formal analytical methodologies (e.g. see Bai and Sarkis 2022) that could also be applied. The lack of data (especially on outcomes) or not meeting the methodological scope could explain this focus.

The study of blockchain technology has been criticized for its lack of grounding in theory or not advancing theory (Zhu, Bai, and Sarkis 2022). The articles in this special issue have mostly been grounded or sought to advance or introduce new theory. Some foundational theories include common organizational theories related to contingency, diffusion, dynamic capability, institutional (or neo-institutional), resource-based, platform network, socio-technical systems, stakeholder, task-technology fit, transaction cost, TOE framework, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology theories.

The breadth of these theoretical perspectives touches upon theoretical foundations from organizational, economic, political science, communication, and information systems theories. This broad perspective of theoretical lenses shows how blockchain—as exemplified by socio-technological and sustainability type concerns—can be investigated from multiple directions. These systems and their interactions with other technologies, social systems, environmental and ecological systems, and political systems add to the complexity of study and understanding. This understanding is necessary for organizations and supply chains that need to take full advantage of blockchains and their ecosystems to achieve operational effectiveness and efficiency.

Conclusion

The blockchain revolution in industry has been filled with hype but also a rational exuberance of potential. We received dozens of submissions and inquiries for this special issue from the academic community. The growth of blockchain technology in operations and supply chain management continues to increase. This increased interest is still tempered by the realization of the complexities and continued evolution of blockchain technology, governance, and perspectives. As a multi-stakeholder technology, we need to expand the context of operational efficiency and effectiveness to go beyond organizations (both services and products) to consider overall supply chains, individuals, government, and non-governmental entities.

The outcomes included costs, quality, timing, resilience, risk, environmental (ecological), and social efficiencies and effectiveness. This special issue introduced many middle-range frameworks, propositions, and research questions that remain open. These outcomes mean that significantly more work is needed to comprehend and understand the linkage between blockchain ecosystems and operational efficiencies and effectiveness more fully. We echo these calls from the special issue articles, that additional research is needed.

We hope that this special issue provides insights, inspiration, and engagement. To get to this stage required the efforts and contributions of many reviewers—we thank them for their efforts. We also thank the editors, especially Prof. Stephen Childe for the guidance and support of this special issue. We also thank the many contributors—both those appearing in this special issue and those who sent their best-quality work for consideration—in helping us achieve the goals set forth by the original call for papers. The industrial, social, and scholarly communities will greatly benefit from these efforts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chunguang April Bai

Chunguang April Bai is currently a Professor in the School of Management and Economics, at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. She earned her Ph.D. in Management Science from the Dalian University of Technology. Her research interests include sustainable supply chain management, smart technology, and the carbon neutralization. She has dozens of publications with over 90 papers in journals, such as Production and Operations Management, Decision Science, European Journal of Operational Research. She has over 9000 citations based on Google Scholar. She has been recognized as one of the most cited researchers in China across disciplines and World’s Top 2% Scientists 2022 (by Stanford University). Her research has been funded by several National Science Foundation of China grants.

Joseph Sarkis

Joseph Sarkis is a Professor of Management with the School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research and teaching interests are in the fields of operations and supply chain management, the natural environment, and technology. He has many publications in several outlets. He has been recognized as a highly cited researcher for several years by Clarivate/Web-of-Science. His most recently published book is an edited major reference work on supply chain management published by Palgrave-MacMillan.

Weili Xue

Weili Xue is currently a Professor in the School of Management and Economics, at Southeast University. He earned her Ph.D. in System Engineering and Engineering Management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include digitalized platform management, inventory, and assortment optimization. He has dozens of publications with over 50 papers in journals, such as Management Science, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Transportation Science, Decision Science, European Journal of Operational Research. His research has been funded by several National Science Foundation of China grants.