Analysing perceived role of blockchain technology in SCM context for the manufacturing industry

ABSTRACT

Blockchain is a disruptive technology that promises to embed visibility and trustworthiness in supply chains. This paper examines the perceived role of blockchain in improving SCM and profitability of organisations in the manufacturing industry. It establishes the blockchain benefits for the manufacturing industry using the process of scale development. The proposed hypotheses related to the indirect effects are based on the resource-based view of the firm. The conditional indirect effects for four organisational factors are tested. The research framework is operationalised based on data from 236 practitioners. The findings show that blockchain is perceived to drive improvement in six supply chain dimensions of the manufacturing industry. The breadth of organisation size and geographical dispersion moderate the mediation relationship between blockchain benefits and incremental profitability. Furthermore, the conditional indirect effects are found significant at mean and ±1σ values of integration intensity and IT integration. According to managers of manufacturing industry, blockchain can bring significant improvement in delivery reliability and mass customisation, which would result in increasing the profitability of the organisation. Organisations with low integration intensity, high IT integration and small size organisations are likely to be the early adopters of blockchain technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Blockchain technology
• manufacturing industry
• supply chain management
• structural equation modeling
• moderated mediation
• conditional indirect effects

Acknowledgements

The authors are very thankful to the anonymous referees and the Associate Editor whose valuable suggestions greatly helped to improve this paper significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amit Karamchandani

Amit Karamchandani is a Ph.D. in the area of Operations management from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (India). His research interests include emergent technology areas such as blockchain and its applications in supply chain management. He is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from IIT (BHU). He has seven years of professional experience with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) in roles such as Quality Assurance Engineer and Senior Design Engineer. He worked in several projects at BHEL aimed at business process digitisation. He has published in reputed refereed journals such as International Journal of Information Management (IJIM).

Samir K. Srivastava

Samir K. Srivastava is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (India). He has more than three decades of experience in teaching, research, consulting and industry. His papers have received ‘Best Student Paper Award’, ‘Best Paper Award’ and ‘McGraw Hill Publishing Best Paper Award’. He was highly commended runner-up of the Emerald/IAM Indian Management Research Fund Award 2015. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, Tata Motors and Indian Army among others. His major areas of interest are operations strategy, public procurement, manufacturing excellence, technology in operations, reverse logistics and sustainable supply chains.

Sushil Kumar

Prof. Sushil Kumar is a Professor of Food and Agribusiness, Business Sustainability and Human Resource Management in the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow. Prior to joining IIM Lucknow in April 2005, he was SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, Toronto (Canada) from where he completed his Doctoral studies too. Earlier, he was a Member of the prestigious All India Service – Indian Forest Services (IFS) 1988 batch. He has worked as Dean (Academic Affairs) at IIM Lucknow for three years and Dean, School of Management, and Dean (Academics) at Gautam Buddha University for one year.

Akhil Srivastava

Akhil Srivastava is a Sloan Fellow from Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He has over 13 years of professional experience with fortune 500 firms including Unilever, ITC, Pepsi & SAB Miller and promising start-up firms. His experience of working and collaborating across end to end business domains – in conjugation with innovative technology and systems automation by utilising skills of change management and design thinking has been of help in building successful and scalable businesses globally. He has authored a well-recognized white paper on ‘Technology in Agribusiness’ and has experience in Enterprise Blockchain in Agribusiness.