Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management: An Application Perspective

Given the hype around the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain technology (BCT) has also received considerable attention outside the financial sector. Multiple applications of BCT in supply chain management (SCM) are discussed in business practice and there is increasing interest in this topic within the academic community. In this paper, we intend to combine these two perspectives on BCT in SCM to summarize a current state of the art and to derive avenues for further research. For this purpose, a comprehensive framework of use case clusters of BCT in SCM is developed according to the distinctive features of BCT. The framework is used to analyze 53 applications of BCT in SCM which are derived from a systematic literature review and a secondary dataset of blockchain-driven innovations in SCM. We identify five emerging use case clusters of BCT in SCM which clearly extend the scope beyond frequently mentioned applications such as product tracking and tracing.