Adoption of blockchain technology in supply chain operations: a comprehensive literature study analysis

Abstract

The concept of blockchain technology, which has been around for over a decade, is gaining traction in academics and the commercial world. Blockchain technology, first created for virtual currency use, has recently found wider applications. Traditional blockchain applications in supply chain management focus on increasing safety, visibility, and auditability. A new movement is underway in which organizations are incorporating blockchain technology into their supply networks to reduce the environmental impact. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of scholarly studies examining the many applications of blockchain technology in the field of supply chain management. A comprehensive evaluation of blockchain applications in the supply chain domain, on the other hand, presents the current state of the art of blockchain in supply chain management. Thus, we use a systematic literature review based on bibliometric analysis to review 477 research articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 2017 and July 2022. This paper sheds light on the latest research trends in the field and guides readers through the many choices that must be made regarding blockchain implementation at various aspects of the supply chain by analyzing the most important and highly cited papers, authors' collaboration networks, keywords, countries, and institutions. Our analysis reveals six different themes related to supply chain traceability, resilience and collaboration, blockchain adoption challenges, supply chain performance, supply chain agility and adaptability, sustainability and carbon auditing, and supply chain finance. Our findings broaden the discussion by taking an integrated approach that embraces blockchain from different angles. Future research paths were pinpointed by systematically mapping and analyzing existing research trends, major research subjects, the evolution of publications over time, patterns of author and country collaboration, keyword co-occurrence, and more.

1 Introduction

Effective supply chain management is the fulcrum of modern-day business. Almost 50% of the industrial-added value is derived from supply chains (Ciliberti et al. 2008). In the era of globalization, modern supply chains comprise multi-echelon, integrated and coordinated business processes. Integration of technologies like RFID, IoT, and artificial intelligence in supply chains has become imperative in global and even local supply chains to make them competitive. A recent Gartner survey report showed that nearly 70% of companies invest in digital transformation to make them agile and resilient. Blockchain technology is expected to have a significant impact on supply chains, with the ability to transform and disrupt supply chains. Global spending on blockchain solutions is projected to reach 6.6 billion dollars in 2021, and it will continue to grow in the coming years, expected to reach 19 billion USD in 2024 (Statista 2022). Blockchain can be integrated with other technologies (like IoT) and used to trace a product’s journey throughout a supply chain, recording every moment of the journey (Wang et al. 2019). A blockchain is a decentralized database or ledger of records and data in an encrypted form distributed and visible among all the members of a network (Kshetri 2018). A detailed illustration of blockchain and its characteristics is given in the later part of this paper. A blockchain-based supply chain is better in terms of traceability and authentication. The advantages and usefulness of blockchain technology in a supply chain's sustainability domain have also been highlighted by various researchers (Helo and Hao 2019). In the last couple of years, researchers and practitioners have discussed the adoption of blockchain technology and the possible scope of adoption in supply chains. Due to Covid-19, companies are started to invest more in disruptive technologies. According to Deloitte’s global blockchain survey “While blockchain has classified as a technology experiment, it now represents a true agent of change that is affecting the entire organization”. In practice, organizations are extensively using blockchain technology in their supply chains across the sector. IBM blockchain platform manages the supply chain data and helps to share the trusted data among the permissioned partners through hyperledger. Renault Group developed XCEED, a blockchain based solution to ensure conformity of the vehicle components by developing a trusted network among suppliers and manufacturers.¹ Airbus (a leading aircraft manufacturer) considered blockchain technology in their supply chain to track different parts’ movement and to maintain automated records (Alper 2018). Home Depot also avail the IBM blockchain solution to maintain their vendor relationship.² Nestle considered Amazon based blockchain solution to maintain transparency in their supply chain, as transparency is becoming important to customers.³ Bai and Sarkis (2020) depicted how Walmart has adopted blockchain technology for their food supply Ruchain to increase the traceability of food products in China. The initiatives by Britain’s National Health Service with Google’s DeepMind for ensuring the security of patient data in the healthcare supply chain by implementing blockchain technology is described by Suleyman and Laurie (2017). Everledger successfully eliminated forced labour use across Africa by deploying blockchain in their diamond supply chain (Bai and Sarkis 2020). Blockchain based computing systems have also enhanced the agility of humanitarian supply chains. In Jordan it is being used to scan the eyes of refugees when they purchase food from local supermarkets (World Food Programme 2017). However, a study conducted by Gartner in 2022 revealed that 80% of the blockchain initiatives in the supply chain domain will remain in the pilot stage (Gartner Report 2020). It may be due to the complex structure of the modern supply chains which actually require digital connectivity and agility. Many organizations attempted to develop strong use cases for the supply chain because they believed that blockchain might help them to negotiate this complexity. However, the majority of these attempts face significant challenges in a supply chain setting because they were based on pilots from the banking and insurance industries.

Academic contributions to link blockchain and supply chain only started in 2015, and papers in this area are still sparse (Di Vaio and Varriale 2020). Researchers like Francisco and Swanson (2018), O’Leary (2017) discussed how blockchain technology is used in a supply chain to make it more efficient and transparent. Kshetri (2018) discussed how blockchain applications are useful in handling trust issues in supply chains. As suggested by MacInnis (2011), conceptual contributions necessitate the identification, delineation and differentiation of a particular entity or a domain, this paper seeks to clearly define and delimit the domain occupied by the blockchain. Thus, the main motivation of this paper is to conduct a literature review to synthesize the existing knowledge on blockchain technology adoption in supply chain management and offers some future research directions. As the development and implementation of blockchain on the supply chain are still at the infancy level, a systematic bibliometric based review can help academicians and practitioners to find its efficacy, potential and disruptive effect. The following research questions may be addressed with the help of this literature review.

RQ1: What are the key areas of supply chain management reported in the literature considered blockchain technology? What is the state of research in such areas?

RQ2: How can blockchain technology help to overcome the challenges faced by supply chain practices?

RQ3: What gaps and limitations do exist in the current knowledge base and what research opportunities can guide future studies?

Thus, the objective of this paper is to analyze the studies related to blockchain applications in the supply chain area to i. identify the knowledge base on blockchain applications for supply chain and the challenges of blockchain implementation, ii. identify the intellectual structure of the knowledge base such as authors, universities, institutions, and most cited articles. iii. develop a network structure between author collaboration, citation mapping, and keywords occurrence to find out the clusters of research areas, keywords, and researchers, iv. identify the research gaps and the potential future research areas. The current study involves research articles between 2017 and July 2022. The reason behind selecting the time period for this study is due to the rapid use of digital technologies in economic activities and with the advent of blockchain technology, the digital economy is poised to take another stride towards globalization.

The rest of this work is organized as follows. In Section 2, a brief overview of blockchain is presented which can help researchers to understand the characteristics and usage of blockchain in different areas. Cues from this discussion can help researchers determine different areas of supply chain management where blockchain usage has remained unexplored. Section 3 discusses the methodology followed by the results and analysis in Section 4. Section 5 is related to the discussion, and finally conclusions with future research directions are provided in Section 6.

2 Overview of blockchain

Blockchain can be considered a distributed, immutable, transparent, and trustworthy database or ledger of records. It is a disruptive mechanism, which is safe, reliable, and has numerous applications. Nakamoto first conceived the idea of blockchain technology for cryptocurrency (Nakamoto 2008). In blockchain technology, data are stored as a chain of blocks. Every new entity can be considered a block and is virtually connected with the previous block with a hash. Each block of a blockchain has a time stamp (Kouhizadeh and Sarkis 2018). The basic framework of a blockchain is shown in Fig. 1 (adopted from Nakamoto 2008).

Fig. 1

Basic framework of a blockchain, adopted from (Adopted Source: Nakamoto 2008)

Based on network management and accessibility, it can be classified mainly into two categories- (i) private and (ii) public (Kouhizadeh and Sarkis 2018). These two types of blockchain frameworks are briefly described in the following. A private blockchain ledger is shared among a group of participants only with a defined group of users having access (Kouhizadeh and Sarkis 2018). In a private blockchain, no one can read/write or audit the blockchain without permission. Here, the owner of the blockchain is a single entity, which can control the entire blockchain, whereas in a public blockchain all the transactions are public, and users can remain anonymous (Wang et al. 2019). In a public blockchain, anyone can join as a new user. It is truly decentralized, but data and information can't be changed once validated on the blockchain. Blockchain has some salient features such as decentralization (Swan 2015; Kouhizadeh and Sarkis 2018), immutable (Kouhizadeh and Sarkis 2018), smart contracts (Gupta 2017), transparency ((Nakamoto 2008; Clohessy and Acton 2019; Iansiti and Lakhani 2017), financial (Dai and Vasarhelyi 2017) which has made it popular and acceptable across almost all the sectors.

Several articles have been published, shown in Appendix (Table 6), related to blockchain implementation in supply chain transportation and logistics (Pournader et al. 2020; Dutta et al. 2020), supply chain integration (Queiroz et al. 2020), global supply chain and cross trade (Chang et al. 2020), agri-food traceability (Feng et al. 2020; Oguntegbe et al. 2022), fresh fruit supply chain (Zhang et al. 2022), sustainability in the supply chain (Saberi et al. 2019), and automotive supply chain complexity (Reddy et al. 2021). The above reviews focused on current research trends and areas and future research gaps. However, each review has some general limitations in terms of the number of research articles, articles selection method, article categorization, time period selection and subjective interpretation. In the last few years, literature reviews have been conducted with bibliometric analysis and network analysis (Xu et al. 2018a, b; Kazemi et al. 2019). Various researchers have applied bibliometric analysis in different areas. Cancino et al. (2019) conducted a bibliometric analysis of supply chain analytical techniques published only in the Computer and Industrial Engineering journal. In another research papers, a bibliometric analysis was conducted by Tandon et al. (2021) only on Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). Kazemi et al. (2019) reviewed the papers related to reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chain by using the bibliometric analysis which was published to celebrate the 55th anniversary of IJPR. Tandon et al. (2021) considered the application of bibliometric techniques on Blockchain applications in every area of management. Xu et al. (2018a, b) conducted a bibliometric based systematic literature review on supply chain finance. Kaffash et al. (2021) analyzed the role of big data in intelligent transportation systems with the help of bibliometric analysis.

3 Methodology

In this study, we consider the systematic literature review along with bibliometric analysis with a specific focus on reviewing the published articles systematically and try to find the current state of research and the future research aspects in the area of blockchain applications in the supply chain. A Systematic literature review assists the researchers in fulfilling two purposes: combining research outcomes in a specific domain by assessing, mapping, and synthesizing the literature and identifying the research gaps which will lead to future research direction (Sharma et al. 2020). A systematic review, according to Gough et al. (2012), consists of a series of activities such as defining the research questions, defining the inclusion and exclusion criteria, defining the keyword-based search terms, compiling the literature, analyzing the material, and synthesizing. Based on structured content analysis and bibliometric analysis, Koberg and Longoni (2019) proposed a four-step strategy for performing systematic reviews. The four-step process comprises material selection, descriptive analysis, category identification, and material evaluation. In the present study, we consider the same methodology (Koberg and Longoni 2019) to find out the themes, methods, and applications.

3.1 Material selection

The main purpose of this review is to study and analyze the blockchain applications in supply chain area. We focus on how blockchain technology has been applied in different aspects of supply chain or how blockchain has been considered to mitigate the challenges in terms of visibility and transparency in supply chain areas. In this phase, we select the keywords that covered the area of supply chain and different types of blockchain applications. The keywords which are used in this paper include “Blockchain”, “Distributed Ledger”, “Supply Chain”, “Sustainability”, “Green Operations”. These keywords are considered based on previous literature and expert opinions from academicians and researchers in the supply chain and blockchain domain. Articles are collected and stored from the Scopus database by using the above defined keywords. The purpose of using only the Scopus database as it consists of wide range of journals from major publishing house such as Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, Springer, IEEE, and Emerald. The initial search identified 921 articles between 2017 and July 2022. Out of the 921 documents, we only limited on journal articles as the source and article published in conference, book chapter, News article are excluded from the search. The total figure is 576 articles, including 538 research articles and thirty-eight review articles. From 576 journal articles, we considered only 514 research articles with English as official language. We limit our study only to the subject area related to business management and accounting, decision sciences, engineering, mathematics, social sciences, environmental sciences, and economics. Finally, we reviewed each shortlisted article and eliminated articles in which aim and scope did not match our objective. The material collection stage thus yielded a dataset comprise of 477 articles. The search results were stored in both CSV file and BibTex format to include all the articles' information such as authors, paper title, affiliation, abstract, keywords, and references.

3.2 Descriptive analysis

The formal characteristics of the collected articles are analyzed and evaluated at this step. We evaluate information on research articles from multiple journals, such as publication date, institutions, author collaboration, methodology, data analysis approach, and theoretical perspective. The bibliometric analysis could assist us in obtaining far more thorough descriptive analysis from bibliographic elements such as authors, keywords, countries, and affiliations. Bibliometric analysis is used by the scholars due to various reasons. It may be to explore the emerging trends, journal performance, collaboration pattern and intellectual structure among the different countries, Institutions, and authors (Donthu et al. 2021).

Bibliometric analysis consists of several phases, such as study objective, data collection, analysis, visualization, and interpretation (Aria and Cuccurullo 2017). The study objective is related to the research objectives of the study. Different network structures can be constructed by using bibliographic elements. The Citation method measures the popularity of an article by counting the number of times other articles cite the article. Different types of co-occurrence analysis, such as co-citation, co-word, and co-author are available in the literature. In a citation network, nodes are the research articles and links are the citations. Co-citation occurs when two research articles are cited in a third research article (White and Griffith 1981). For example, papers A and B are co-cited if both papers A and B are cited by a third article C. Word frequency calculation is used in bibliometric analysis to find the research trend in one domain by considering the frequencies of the author’s keywords or frequencies of subjective words in the literature (Liao et al. 2019). As a result of co-word analysis, a set of research themes can be identified and studied (Cobo et al. 2011).

This study uses R software and Visualizations of Similarities (VOS) Viewer software. It is useful to represent the data based on co-citation and citation analysis (Rana and Daultani 2022). Interested readers or researchers can refer to Aria and Cuccurullo (2017) and Donthu et al. (2021) for more detailed descriptions of bibliometric analysis in R software.

3.3 Category identification

For categorizing the review articles, the categories based on analytical classification are determined inductively. It is an iterative process that includes category evaluation, testing, and verification. The main analytical categories are identified based on the research model proposed by Stuart et al. (2002), taking into account the aim of the research (the research objective), method of data gathering (reported tools/procedure for identifying, delimitating, and gathering relevant data), and method of data analysis (qualitative and quantitative analysis). In this paper, we used a co-citation network to identify the classification of the literature.

3.4 Material evaluation

In the material evaluation phase, all the research articles are coded against the categories identified during the co-citation analysis. Blockchain applications in supply chain related articles are categorized in different clusters to reflect the focus of research articles. Once all research articles had been categorized then we integrated the summaries which figured out the main topic, gaps, and areas of the research. The schematic diagram of the research methodology has been shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Schematic diagram of research methodology

4 Result and analysis

4.1 Initial data statistics

Over the seven-year period, most papers were published in the last three years i.e., 2019, 2020, and 2021, approximately covering eighty-five percent of the overall set of articles. The results represent an exponential growth pattern over the time horizon. Table 1 represents the top 10 journals in which these articles have appeared. From Table 1, it is observed that the International Journal of Production Research, Sustainability (Switzerland), International Journal of Information Management, International Journal of Production Economics, and Supply Chain Management are the major contributing journals in this area.

Table 1 Contribution of top 10 journals in the area of blockchain adoption in supply chain

4.2 Descriptive analysis

We are only interested in finding out detailed summary information related to authors, citations, publication year, countries, and references. The primary information obtained after bibliometric analysis is given in Table 2.

Table 2 Basic descriptive statistics based on bibliometric analysis

The primary information table (shown in Table 2) represents the basic descriptive statistics such as the number of keywords, documents, authors, sources, timespan, the average number of citations, and average citations per document. In Table 2, different co-authorship indices are calculated. For example, the author per document index represents the ratio between the total number of authors and the total number of documents i.e., $1263/477=2.64$. On the other hand, the co-authors per document index can be calculated as the average number of co-authors per document. In this case, we will consider the author's appearance value. Thus, the co-authors per document index value is $1531/477=3.21.$ The value of the authors per document index is always less than the co-authors per document index because in authors per document, even if an author has published more than one article, it will be counted as one. The collaboration index gives the ratio of the total number of authors of multi-authored documents and total multi-authored documents i.e. $1209/(477-54)=2.86.$

4.3 Statistics related to authors, countries and affiliations

The number of total publications may not be the only way to measure the contribution and effectiveness of an author. Based on Lotka’s law, the number of authors publishing x papers in a given time period is just fraction i.e. ${^{1}/_{x^{2}}}$ of those publishing a single contribution. According to the Scopus database, there are 1263 authors published in the area of blockchain. Out of 1263 authors, 739 authors having a single publication and very few authors have more than three publications. Thus, it is essential to realize the core authors who have greater contribution in this domain. Therefore, Price’s law (Xu et al. 2018a, b) is considered to find the minimum number of publications for an author, shown in Eq. (1).

$${P}_{min}=0.749\times \sqrt{{X}_{max}}$$

(1)

where, ${X}_{max}$ represents the number of research articles published by an author. Based on Eq. (1), we have identified that Choi, Gunasekaran, Liz, Sarkis, and Kshetri are the most significant authors in this domain. Most of the authors have a background in supply chain, operations management, and engineering. They mainly focus on modelling related to adoption barriers, sustainability, and transportation.

The corresponding country and institution affiliation of an author are extracted from the data source. From the affiliation data, it is observed that contributing organizations/institutions are distributed across the globe, such as China, India, United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and Korea. Figure 3 represents the geographical locations of different organizations/countries which are involved in Blockchain related research in supply chains. The density variation of blue colour in Fig. 3 is proportional to the degree of contribution of each organization/country. The corresponding author’s country-wise statistics are shown in Table 3. In Table 3, we can observe that the United States and India have the most single country publication, whereas the multiple country publications ratio of China is higher than the United States and India. The Author’s university or institution information was extracted and is shown in Table 4. Only the top eight universities are sorted based on the number of publications. The most productive organization with eight publications was the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, followed by California State University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the National Institute of Industrial Engineering of India. On the other hand, the University of North Carolina secured top position in terms of total number of citations.

Fig. 3

Geographical locations of all contributing countries/organizations

Table 3 Top 10 Country-wise statistics (based on corresponding author)

Table 4 Top eight universities/institutions statistics

4.4 Network analysis

Network analysis and graphical investigation are integral parts of bibliometric analysis. Manuscript attributes such as author, affiliation, keywords, and references are linked with each other. This produces networks such as co-citation or coupling or collaboration networks. In this paper, both network analysis and graphical analysis have been applied to the 277 papers by establishing meaningful linkages. Several tools are available in the literature for such network analysis and graphical visualizations. In this study, VOSViewer (Van Eck and Waltman 2010) and R are used for the network analysis. This software allows us to perform bibliographic coupling of countries, citation analysis, co-citation analysis of authors and journals, and co-occurrence of the author keywords.

4.4.1 Citation analysis

Citation analysis can be undertaken in terms of local and global citations. Local citation analysis considers the citation within the 338-node network, whereas global citation represents citations from other publications or research. A local citation analysis of 338 documents showed that 103 documents cited other articles in the citation network. Table 5 represents the top 15 documents based on their local and global citations. Saberi et al. (2019), publishing in the International Journal of Production Research received the highest number of local citations and was co-authored by the influential author Sarkis. However, the global citation of Saberi et al. (2019) is much lower than Kshetri (2017) publishing in IT Professional. The difference in terms of global citation because Kshetri (2017) addressed not only sustainability and the supply chain but also focused on other applications of blockchain. Figure 4 shows the document citation network and also supports the results in Table 5. We can also observe that Saberi et al. (2019), Kamble et al. (2019, 2020), and Dolgui et al. (2020) formed a prominent cluster in citation network.

Table 5 Top fifteen cited (Local) documents

Fig. 4

Citation analysis

4.4.2 Co-citation analysis

As an output of the co-citation analysis, we can generate different clusters, represented as various analysis units such as authors, documents, and journals. Based on the analysis unit, we can consider many kinds of relations, i.e. co-cited authors, co-cited documents, and co-cited journals. In this study, we consider the co-cited document network. A co-citation network for documents can be obtained as $C={A}^{T}\times A,$ where A is a $\left(document \times Cited\;References\right)$ matrix. The element ${c}_{ij}$ represents the number of co-citations that exist between documents. A similarity measure is used to normalize the co-citation network matrix. The Association strength is considered the most appropriate measure of similarity (Van Eck and Waltman 2010), and it is measured as $\frac{{c}_{ij}}{{c}_{i}{c}_{j}}$, where ${c}_{ij}$ represents the co-citation frequencies between the ${i}^{th}$ document and ${j}^{th}$ document, whereas and ${c}_{i}$ and ${c}_{j}$ represent the frequencies of individual documents. The Data clustering technique can be applied to detect different clusters of documents in the co-citation network. The Louvain algorithm is used here to find the clusters. The Louvain algorithm is based on the iterative optimization method, aiming to optimize the number of clusters that maximize the modularity index. The value of the modularity index lies between [-1,1], and it considers the density of edges within the clusters versus the edges between clusters. Interested readers can refer to through Fahimnia et al. (2015) and Xu et al. (2018a, b) for a detailed understanding of the Louvain algorithm and modularity index calculation. The co-citation analysis has been analyzed in R software, and the co-citation network diagram is built using VOSViewer. Figure 5 represents the co-citation network involving only 190 references with minimum five citations.

Fig. 5

Co-Citation network with a minimum five citations

As shown in Fig. 5, Saberi et al. (2019) has the biggest node which means that it is frequently cited by the other documents in the supply chain area. The total link strength of node Saberi et al. (2019) is 87. Furthermore, 52 references in Fig. 5 are clustered into seven areas. Cluster 1 consists of 45 references and mainly focuses traceability and collaboration issues in supply chain and shows how blockchain can improve the supply chain structure and organizational structure. Cluster 2 consists of 33 references where the main focus is on blockchain adoption challenges as well as the enablers. We can classify references in cluster 3 based on digitization of the supply chain, fulfilment of supply chain objectives, and supply chain performances. Cluster 3 consists of 47 references related to supply chain performance enhancement along with blockchain applications. Cluster 4 consists of twenty references which represent the supply chain adaptability, agility, and alignment. Here, we try to establish the direct relationship between blockchain applications with supply chain adaptability, agility, and alignment. Also, we focused on how we can achieve competitive advantage through blockchain by managing product design and progression towards the quality, cost and manufacturing efficiency in the supply chain. In Cluster 5, we consider how blockchain application is contributing towards sustainability in the supply chain. 22 references reveal the untapped potential of blockchain in sustainable supply chain related problems. Cluster 6 consists of eighteen references, represent how blockchain revolutionizing the global supply chain by considering trust and transparency. Last, cluster 7, demystifying the contribution of blockchain in supply chain finance. In Section 4.4, we discuss the content of the seven clusters in details.

4.4.3 Keyword co-occurrence network analysis

By analyzing keywords, one can find the research themes. In this section, we pair up the authors’ keywords by co-occurrence and develop a keyword co-occurrence network. Two keywords are said to be co-occurred if they both occur in the same title/abstract. The distance between two nodes in the co-occurrence map is inversely proportional to the similarity of the two keywords.

Thus, keywords with a higher rate of co-occurrence remain close to each other. From 477 publications, we extracted 899 authors’ keywords and analyzed them in R and VOSViewer. Figure 6 shows the keyword co-occurrence citation network with a minimum number of citations of three. The topic dendogram (shown in Fig. 7) highlights the hierarchical order and the relationship between the authors’ keywords. The boxes (shown in Fig. 7) and the vertical lines represent different clusters. According to Secinaro et al. (2020), Fig. 7 does not represent the actual level of association among the clusters but we can estimate the approximate number of clusters. Concerning the blockchain applications in supply chain (in Fig. 7), they are divided into 4 main strands.

Fig. 6

Co-occurrence of author keyword with minimum number of citations is three

Fig. 7

Topic denogram based on authors keywords

5 Content analysis

The content analysis investigates the major themes of the proposed work in the bibliography. In this section, we analyze different topics covered in Scopus index journals and show strong hints of further research areas among the scholars. The methodology opts for content analysis to capture the large data in organized and systematic manner. We have categorized the papers on the basis of the contribution and characteristics of studies performed (Abedinnia et al. 2017; Shekarian et al. 2017). The sample is analyzed and eight major themes have been classified on the basis of keywords used in Scopus indexed papers, as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

Broad classification on the basis of keywords

The major themes identified on the basis of content analysis are as following:

5.1 Supply chain traceability, resilience, collaboration

This theme is the most prevalent in the supply chain and contributes 33% to the adoption of blockchain in supply chain network design. Lack of traceability in the supply chain to check ethical production, and safety of the product is a challenging job (Hastig and Sodhi 2020). Operations Management scholars are now showing their interest related to supply chain transparency, visibility, and traceability. Blockchain provides additional value to the supply chain through its visibility and traceability characteristics (Wang et al. 2019). The observation reveals how supply chain resilience is affected by collaboration (i.e., between stakeholders and different alliances) and certifies the greater perceptibility into supply chains through which the concerned companies increase their awareness of possible serious disruptions. Hastig and Sodhi (2020) defined the business requirement for the implementation of blockchain-based traceability in the supply chain and also they had pointed out the critical business requirement factors. They have identified meeting the stakeholders’ needs, improving the sustainability performance, curbing illicit business practices, increase the operational efficiency and supply chain performance as the business requirement for the implementation blockchain-based traceability. On the other hand, Xu et al. (2021) also discussed the impact of blockchain’s features on supply chain transparency. They have developed propositions from the supply chain transparency literature. Kamble et al. (2020) developed a model related to blockchain technology in Agriculture Supply Chain (ASC). They observed and established relationships among the enablers of blockchain technology adoption. From their model, we can observe that traceability is the major enabler for blockchain adaptation which is followed by auditability, immutability and provenance. Rogerson and Parry (2020) conducted a case study on four firms to evaluate blockchain as a visibility tool. However, they have encountered several problems such as threat issues, boundary issues, governance issues, and consumer issues. Omar et al. (2022) addressed the robust traceability solution required for precisely tracking the movement of PPE kits in the supply chain during Covid-19. They developed a blockchain based traceability system to fulfill the increasing demand of PPE kits. Manupati et al. (2022) developed a decision support system based on blockchain technology to predict the disruption in a supply chain. It will help the supply chain manager to understand and decide the optimal recovery strategies for a disrupted supply chain. On the other hand, Bai and Sarkis (2020) focused on a much bigger aspect i.e. transparency in sustainable supply chains. In the supply chain, information readily available to all the supply chain stakeholders will increase transparency. A dearth of transparency could create many supply chain complications, such as cost issues, ethical production, and environmental issues. In their model (Bai and Sarkis 2020), they defined sustainable supply chain transparency into three dimensions, such as range of transparency, product transparency, and participant transparency. According to Feng et al. (2020), traceability is considered as a significant element in food safety and quality. Their main aim was to analyze the blockchain technology characteristics and find solutions for addressing blockchain-based traceability system implementation challenges. However, the complexity of modern supply chain network and their fragmentation act as barriers to developing a proper traceability system. Casino et al. (2020) highlighted these issues and developed a traceability framework in order to assess supply chain traceability in the dairy sector. To increase traceability in the supply chain, companies must exchange quality-related information (Behnke and Janssen 2020). However, it creates many trust issues among the stakeholders. Behnke and Janssen (2020) addressed this challenge of traceability information exchange in their model. They highlighted some socio-technical constraints such as the boundary conditions in realizing a food traceability system.

Supply Chains have experienced various incidents that have affected their operational performance. The vulnerability of supply chain to disruption has increased significantly due to vertical integration or collaboration among the supply chain actors or give more weightage towards the supply chain efficiency. Supply chains are now focusing on supply chain resilience by considering multi sourcing, horizontal collaboration, reduction in inventory, or capacity flexibility. Collaboration consists of information sharing, resource sharing, and supply chain goal alignment. Blockchain technology proves its utility in the area of secure information sharing. Lohmer and Lasch (2020) discussed the impact of blockchain on supply chain resilience. They have developed an agent-based simulation model to analyze the situation. According to Dolgui et al. (2020), unexpected interruptions are quite difficult to predict but we can reduce the impact by sharing the information across the supply chain, maintain the supplier relation. All of these strategies we can achieve with blockchain technology. Min (2018), Saberi et al. (2019) focused on information sharing among the supply chain members by considering blockchain technology. Li et al. (2018) highlighted the use of blockchain technology to achieve coopetition in supply chain.

5.2 Blockchain technology adaption barriers/challenges and drivers

This study describes the adoption of blockchain and its challenges and drivers in the supply chain area. As we know, blockchain offers a digital transformation technology that can improves the business process and deliver better customer service. People often believe blockchain is a silver bullet for all businesses (Kumar et al. 2020). However, Kumar et al. (2020) mentioned that blockchain is high cost medium and adaptation of blockchain is only viable if the higher cost is counterbalanced by the benefits. The significant barriers recognized by researchers are time-consuming logistics operations, standardization problems, complex blockchain applications & associated high costs, governing ambiguity and lack of collaboration between firms. The research findings demonstrate the characteristics of blockchain technology such as transparency in information flow, perpetual scenario and that the smart systems have substantial constructive effects on enterprise progress and marginal effects on partnership efficiency. Biswas and Gupta (2019) developed the DEMATEL based framework where they identified the causal relationships among various barriers related to blockchain implementation in industry and the service sectors. On the other hand, Queiroz and Wamba (2019) developed an empirical model to identify the main challenges of blockchain implementation in India and in the USA. Yadav et al. (2020) focused on the agriculture supply chain and identified the blockchain adaptation barriers. They developed ISM-DEMATEL based framework to identify the interrelation among the barriers. Ghode et al. (2020) and Lohmer and Lasch (2020) aimed to identify the critical factors and its challenges that influence the adoption of blockchain technology adoption. However, Schuetz and Venkatesh (2020) highlighted the practical contribution of blockchain technology by which rural India can alleviate the financial barriers and provide solutions so that rural India can connect with the global supply chain network.

Several researchers worked on blockchain adaptation models in the supply chain. Kamble et al. (2019) worked on user perception related to blockchain adoption. They have used three different models such as Technology readiness index (TRI), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to understand the user perception. Wong et al. (2020) also focused on the behavioral dimension of blockchain adaptation in the supply chain.

5.3 Supply chain performance

The use of blockchain technologies aid and constrain supply chain performance. Five enablers have been identified which are traceability, trust, sustainability, cost-effectiveness and transparency. These can improve the performance of the supply chain network. As a physical internet technology, the adoption of blockchain technology has not been extensively executed in supply chain industries. In recent years many authors have shed light on the usage of blockchain technology in the domain of supply chain performance. Kshetri (2018) explored the effect of blockchain on supply chain performance such as cost, quality, speed, risk reduction, and sustainability. Hald and Kinra (2019) developed some propositions related to blockchain adoption challenges and enablers in supply chain performance. They have pointed out the adverse effect of blockchain i.e. it increases supply chain segregation. Blockchain also forces a firm to think about which type of information or knowledge they can share throughout the supply chain. Hald and Kinra (2019) also pointed out that the usage of blockchain technology may reduce the supply chain adaptability. Sheel and Nath (2019) also explained how blockchain technology can improve supply chain adaptability, alignment and agility. Chang et al. (2019) focused on re-engineering of supply chain using blockchain technology to improve performance of supply chain. Rahmanzadeh et al. (2020) integrated blockchain technology with product design. Wamba et al. (2020) considered the blockchain as an enabler of supply chain performance. Di Vaio and Varriale (2020) focused on the practical utilities of blockchain in supply chain performance enhancement. They focused on the airport industry and they have shown how blockchain technology promotes cooperation between the main players in the aviation industry and the air traffic controllers (ATCs) to reduce fragmentation, inefficiency, and uncoordinated operations. Nandi et al. (2020) tried to fill up the gap between blockchain technology and supply chain management by responding to the research question such as what the capabilities of a blockchain are based supply chain, and what are the performance outcomes of blockchain based supply chain capabilities. They investigated these above questions from the ‘Resource-Based View’ (RBV) point of view.

5.4 Supply chain adaptability/agility/alignment

Supply chain adaptability refers to the ability of the supply chain to change its design according to the market or customer need in terms of product, service, and technology. The agility of the supply chain represents how quickly and effectively the supply responds towards market change. Supply chain alignment refers to the ability of the supply chain to ensure equitable distribution of risks, costs, and gains among all the members of the supply chain (Dubey et al. 2018). Basically, supply chain alignment represents the process of integration of the supply chain members so that it can easily mitigate the risks, minimize the costs and increase the profit (Sheel and Nath 2019). Now, the question is how does blockchain facilitate supply chain adaptability, agility, and alignment of a firm? As we know, blockchain technology has the ability to improve the connectivity among the supply chain members which leads to visibility and connectivity improvement in the supply chain. Dubey et al. (2018) empirically analysed that supply chain visibility has a significant impact on supply chain adaptability, agility and alignment. On the other hand, Sheel and Nath (2019) also empirically established a positive relation between blockchain based supply chain adaptability, agility and alignment with form competitiveness. Also, focusing on dynamic capabilities and resources such as supplier relations and product design provides an extra edge to achieve the competitive advantage of a firm. Blockchain has also contributed to how to achieve a competitive advantage by managing the supplier and product design. Scholars have focused on developing the linkage of product design and progression towards quality, cost and manufacturing efficiency. Various concepts which significantly influence the total product cost have emerged in recent times. The industry and academia have shown their interest in the interrelationship among product characteristics, design of production and control and supply chain network design. This linkage emphasizes the ground-breaking impact of blockchain design on SCM. Some works in this domain are discussed below. Hald and Kinra (2019) depicted how blockchain technology facilitates and constrains supply chain management. Sheel and Nath (2019) showed in their paper that supply chain participants believe that the implementation of blockchain technology may enhance the supply chain parameters.

5.5 Sustainability and carbon auditing

Blockchain technology has drawn significant attention in transforming the overall view of supply chain and sustainability. Few applied ongoing use cases reveal the untapped potential of blockchain, especially in sustainability-related problems. Given its promise, the adoption of blockchain technology, although hyped for years, has not seen rapid acceptance. In recent years many authors have discussed how the sustainability of supply chains can be achieved with the help of blockchain technology. Kouhizadeh and Sarkis (2018) presented an overview of practices and potential uses in green supply chain management. The authors considered almost all the operational areas of a supply chain and discussed how blockchain technology can make each supply chain domain the most sustainable. Saberi et al. (2019) examined blockchain technology to mitigate the potential hindrances in the context of a sustainable supply chain. Here authors have briefly discussed how blockchain can be used in a supply chain to handle environmental issues. First, the authors have discussed that with the incorporation of blockchain, substandard products can be tracked, reducing emissions of Greenhouse gases. Secondly, they used blockchain to check green products regarding their impacts on the environment. Thirdly, it can motivate people and organizations to participate in recycling programs.

The success of Blockchain technology also has a significant impact on carbon emissions and trading, with a long-term effect on climate change. However, the application of blockchain in this particular aspect is still in the nascent stage. In carbon trading systems, the most important thing is the transparency of the data. Most of the time the collected data are less monitored and erroneous which leads to a lack of trust among the stakeholders. In December 2013, the Malaysian government (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment) introduced the National carbon reporting program where Malaysian manufacturing firms were asked to submit a report on their carbon footprint. However, the initiative did not work well due to lack of support from industry, data manipulation or data loss (Fernando et al. 2021). Blockchain technology can be used here to increase the transparency of the collected data. Khaqqi et al. (2018) considered the blockchain technology as a platform in emission trading system. The transparency and efficiency of the emission trading system can be improved with the help of blockchain technology. Blockchain based emission trading system ensures the safety of each transaction and is recorded in the shared ledger. Mercedes-Benz is currently collaborating with a blockchain startup Circular to evaluate the transparency of carbon dioxide in the battery supply chain. Fu et al. (2018) developed a blockchain based emission trading system to evaluate the carbon emission in the apparel industry. Choi and Luo (2019) developed theoretical models to explain how sustainable fashion supply chain operations affect data quality problems. Manupati et al. (2020) developed a blockchain-based approach to enhance performance and optimize both emissions related costs and operational costs in a supply chain. Leng et al. (2020) surveyed how blockchain can overcome the significant barriers to achieve sustainability from the perspective of manufacturing and product lifecycle management. Prajapati et al. (2022) developed a framework based on a virtual closed-loop supply chain based on blockchain and IoT technologies. They maximized the total expected profit by minimizing the cost of the supply chain network.

5.6 Supply chain finance

Due to the technology enabled built-in trust system, supply chain contributors work substantially and apparently run a stable, suitable and perceptible business. The design of the blockchain is driven to restructure the supply chain finance (SCF) for small and medium industries to reduce the cost of the cash flow, financing and speeding up of the cash flows. The study revealed that the distributed ledgers with blockchain technology deliver significant paybacks for all the suppliers involved in supply chain finance transactions, promise to accelerate the processes and reduce the overall cost of finance agenda. The application of blockchain is pervasive in the area of supply chain finance. Several authors have discussed different issues in this domain. Choi (2020) developed two models, one without blockchain technology, and the second one with blockchain technology which was then optimized. The author proved analytically that the ordering quantity and the inventory service level achieved by the retailer are lower under the case of blockchain technology.

5.7 Blockchain practical initiatives

The Blockchain technique is widely applicable and has been successfully executed in various industries. Walmart has worked with IBM since 2016 on blockchain technology to manage the traceability of its food products. Like Walmart, other companies such as Unilever, Nestle, and Mclane company collaborated with IBM to become champions in blockchain technology. Logistics is considered the lifeline of modern-day business and almost 90 percent of the world trade has been carried out by maritime transport. Global supply chain/trade is very complex due to its complex structure and involves various members with conflicting interests. Thus, it is very cumbersome to increase efficiency. Blockchain technology can help to alleviate the efficiency or performance of the global supply chain. A joint venture by IBM and Maersk (a Danish shipping company) developed a blockchain based digitized supply chain to maintain an end-to-end shipment tracking system (Groenfeldt 2017). ZIM, an ocean carrier company consider blockchain to maintain the bill of lading. Accenture is also considering a blockchain-based system to facilitate a single source for all the stakeholders of their supply chain. Airbus is showing interest in blockchain adoption to monitor the movement of the complex parts that come from different suppliers. We have noticed a substantial number of practical applications of Blockchain technology in cross-border supply chains. Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) of South Korea successfully implemented blockchain technology for the shipment of containers to China in 2017. Cognizant provides a blockchain-based application for traditional retailing (Tönnissen and Teuteberg 2020), and OpenBazar is an electronic market trading in goods and services on a blockchain-based platform.

6 Discussion

The content analysis in the above section leads us to identify the managerial insights of blockchain implementation in supply chains. It is observed in the previous section that blockchain is widely implemented in various domains of the supply chain which leads to enhancement of supply chain performance. The insights we have obtained from the literature review suggest that the benefits of blockchain and the major applications of blockchain in supply chains are to increase supply chain visibility, which then has a ripple effect i.e., bringing the other advantages such as process optimization and automation (Wang et al. 2019). The security level in blockchain protects the information related to products, trade, and logistics and offers strategic benefits to supply chains. Blockchain enabled supply chains can also secure their databases and protect their data from recent cyber-attacks.

From the literature review, we can express the importance of blockchain technology in terms of extended visibility, traceability, creating smart contracts, digitization and optimization of supply chain operations. In most cases, blockchain applications are related to product tracking or shipment tracking.

We have identified a set of barriers related to blockchain implementation in the supply chain from the content analysis. These barriers can be classified as organizational barriers and system-related barriers (Saberi et al. 2019). Some researchers revealed that many companies are not sure about the technical benefits of blockchain because it is still in the developing phase or the technology is difficult to understand. Changing the mindset of the stakeholder and operational policies are creating barriers to blockchain implementation. On the other hand, some researchers also pointed out the difficulties in defining the ownership of the data and the intellectual properties in the blockchain. Implementation of blockchain technology may complicate the existing supply chain ecosystem. Thus, blockchain implementation in supply chains is still in its infancy.

In our review, we have considered various aspects, such as supply chain traceability, resilience, collaboration, supply chain performance, sustainability, global supply chain, and supply chain finance. There is a significant amount of research on supply chain sustainability and most is related to the development of sustainability index. Blockchain technology seems to have such potential to measure environmental performance quickly and effectively. We have observed the potential applications of blockchain technology in the global supply chain, making them efficient and cost-effective. The major advantage of blockchain technology is that all members of a supply chain are integrated under the same window. However, the full potential advantages of blockchain are yet to be measured. The success of blockchain totally depends on the mutual trust among the stakeholders which is considered as the most important factor in the successful implementation of blockchain. Thus, we need to explore blockchain technology on a much wider scale.

6.1 Implications of this study

This study aims to provide a comprehensive research view of blockchain applications in the supply chain area by addressing three research questions. The research questions are related to supply chain practices, key contributors, research themes, and future research areas. Bibliometric analysis along with systematic literature review helps us to find the answer to the research questions. The implication section is categorized here into two aspects. First in terms of the theoretical aspect and second in terms of the practical aspect. The practical aspect is further categorized into two sections: implication for the practitioners and implication of other stakeholders (policymakers and other regulatory bodies).

6.2 Theoretical implications

The present study has performed bibliometric analysis and content analysis to identify the key research areas, the main contributors (authors, countries and institutes), and the major research themes. This study has identified seven research themes and classified the research articles accordingly. The thematic areas that have been developed from the co-citation analysis involve supply chain traceability, supply chain resilience, blockchain adaption challenges, supply chain agility/alignment, sustainability and carbon auditing, and global supply chain. We have also discussed the issues involved in these areas. The research results signify the increasing research interest in blockchain helping firms to increase supply chain performance. Also, from the citation network analysis, we can summarize the main contributing authors.

6.3 Implications for the practitioners

Transparency, visibility, traceability and efficiency are the congregating need of a supply chain and enhance the performance of a supply chain. Blockchain has intrinsic characteristics (data visibility, data sharing, security) and it can be integrated with the supply chain process to increase efficiency. However, as an emerging technology, practitioners need to be assessed the potential benefits and challenges, and the current position of the company before implementing blockchain technology. Practitioners should conduct some sort of study to analyze the level of difficulties it brings to the organizations. Here, we are trying to figure out the scope, benefits, and challenges of blockchain technology in the supply chain to practitioners and suggest to them how to increase the performance of their supply chain. From the review, we can suggest that blockchain technology can be considered in every aspect of the supply chain. Blockchain technology has the ability to transform supply chain activities which we can easily monitor and control. Blockchain can be leveraged to many aspects of the supply chain for example supply chain coordination, product traceability, logistics, evaluating sustainability and carbon auditing. Based on the literature review, we have observed that one of the implications of this technology is in the banking and finance sector as it provides more secure and timely transactions. Also, blockchain enhances the security and traceability of drug and agriculture supply chain by providing effective communication and immutable data among various partners of the supply chain. Blockchain also facilitates to manage of the carbon footprint and environmental impact of products by using smart contracts. Besides the benefits, practitioners may face some barriers while implementing the blockchain. The challenges may be in terms of blockchain implementation cost which is quite high and also need frequent maintenance, data security and ownership, infrastructure (mainly for the developing countries where internet connectivity is itself a major challenge), lack of awareness and top management commitment, and non-existence of proper regulations. Previous research has revealed that blockchain is already being utilized by Walmart, IBM, Boeing, Airbus, Nestle, and other organizations to improve the efficiency, resilience, and transparency of their supply chains. Practitioners might focus on creating case studies to better understand the context, obstacles, and potential of blockchain use in the supply chain which will help to develop the capacities, resources, and enhance the skill set of the employee and stakeholders.

6.4 Implications in terms of other stakeholders (policy makers, government organizations and regulatory authorities):

As we know blockchain technology implementation is very cost sensitive. Thus, OEMs or other supply chain members may expect subsidies from the government so they can implement digital technologies in both the upstream and downstream of their supply chain. Moreover, the government can easily gather reliable data with the help of blockchain which will improve the quality of governance. In this context, regulators are also encouraged to incorporate necessary changes in the regulations. However, supply chain members may not have that much knowledge to access and implement digital technologies. To overcome the knowledge gap, it is necessary to train, provide knowledge, and motivate the members so that the efficiency of the firm should increase. Furthermore, policymakers should develop policies which can connect the government with firms for better implementation of blockchain technology at a minimum cost.

7 Conclusions

The application of blockchain technology in the domain of supply chain management has paved many new avenues for effective implementation of supply chain management. For the last couple of years, researchers have explored this area quite extensively. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the concept of blockchain technology has been integrated with the area of supply chain management. Through a systematic literature review and bibliometric research, we have tried to understand the present scenario of the application of blockchain technology in the domain of supply chain management.

The bibliometric analysis results address the first research question of this study, namely, what are the supply chain areas where blockchain has been employed. In-depth network analysis was used to discover critical areas of supply chain management such as traceability, coordination, cross-border commerce, sustainability, and carbon trading. The content analysis of each of these supply chain aspects gives the present status of research for blockchain deployment. Furthermore, the content analysis assists us in understanding the implementation obstacles, benefits, and potential sectors of blockchain technology, which is essentially our second and third study questions.

This paper is not exempt from limitations. We have selected the keywords related to the blockchain and supply chain. The keywords which we have considered for this study may not be fully comprehensive. Different search terms or keywords may produce a different cluster which can be interpreted differently. Also, developing an approach to categorize the sample articles is purely subjective, involving individual judgment. Sometimes the judgment may not be completely foolproof, which may give rise to an insufficient population of articles for analysis.

Appendix

Table 6 Review of previously published review articles