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1 – 10 of over 2000This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the value of blockchain for supply chain management by assessing empirical evidence on the relationship between blockchain and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the value of blockchain for supply chain management by assessing empirical evidence on the relationship between blockchain and supply chain performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a structured review of the academic literature to identify and assess papers providing empirical insight on operational blockchain applications. The authors complement the findings from this review with primary empirical data from 11 interviews with blockchain providers, users and experts involved in four recent projects.
Findings
The paper presents an integrated research framework that illustrates the impact of blockchain on supply chain performance. The findings highlight that blockchain can affect supply chain performance directly – via one of its core technological features – and indirectly via the broader business project through which blockchain technology is implemented.
Practical implications
Insights from this paper should provide managers with a more nuanced understanding of how blockchain technology can be leveraged to address important supply chain management challenges.
Originality/value
Prior research addressing the relationship between blockchain and supply chain performance mostly discusses potential performance effects of blockchain, presents individual blockchain applications and/or provides little explanation for how the core technological features of blockchain affect supply chain performance. This paper systematically assesses the ways in which blockchain can affect supply chain performance. In doing so, it goes beyond the initial hype around blockchain technology while countering some of the more recent critiques.
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James C. Brau, John Gardner, Hugo A. DeCampos and Krista Gardner
Blockchain technology offers numerous venues for supply chain applications and research. However, the connections between specific blockchain features and future applications have…
Abstract
Purpose
Blockchain technology offers numerous venues for supply chain applications and research. However, the connections between specific blockchain features and future applications have been unclear to date in its evolution. The purpose of this study is to fill this void.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors advance the understanding of blockchain in supply chain management by providing a new research framework built on unique blockchain features as applied across core supply chain functions.
Findings
This study’s framework is a feature-function matrix that integrates four overarching supply chain functions (i.e. supplier management, logistics, production processes and customer management) with nine blockchain features (i.e. traceability/provenance, accessibility, visibility, immutability, distributed/shared ledger, validity, peer-to-peer transacting, pseudonymity and programmability). This study’s feature-function framework is supported by a structured, systematic review of reviews using PRISMA methods. The authors use the framework to present a future blockchain research agenda in supply chain management.
Originality/value
The authors provide a new blockchain feature/supply chain function framework and provide a structured path for future research.
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A blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology that stores the information of every transaction in the network. The blockchain has emerged with a huge diversity of…
Abstract
Purpose
A blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology that stores the information of every transaction in the network. The blockchain has emerged with a huge diversity of applications not only in the economic but in the non-economical domain as well. Blockchain technology promises to provide a wide range of solutions to the problems faced during implementation of smart cities. It has the potential to build smart contracts more secure, thus eliminating the need for centralized authority.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a proof-of-concept for a use case that uses an Ethereum platform to build a blockchain network to buy, sell or rent a property.
Findings
The findings of this study provide an opportunity to create novel decentralized scalable solutions to develop smart cities by enabling paperless transactions. There are enormous opportunities in this distributed ledger technology which will bring a revolutionary change in upcoming years.
Originality/value
The concept of blockchain along with smart contracts can be used as a promising technology for sharing services which is a common requirement in smart cities. All the blockchain transactions are stored in decentralized shared database. The transaction recorded in decentralized system is immutable, it cannot be altered and hence chance of forgery is negligible.
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This chapter reviews some of the technical background relating to the designs of digital infrastructures for financial services. Such technical background could be useful to the…
Abstract
This chapter reviews some of the technical background relating to the designs of digital infrastructures for financial services. Such technical background could be useful to the understanding of the design choices that the central banks and pertinent regulators face when developing or promoting open digital infrastructures for financial services. First, the chapter reviews modularity and interoperability in the design of digital infrastructure. The chapter then examines three broad architectural models of open digital infrastructures: decentralized, centralized and distributed. The chapter ends with some lessons learnt from the different architectural models that have been implemented in practice.
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Samridhi Tanwar and Aakash Khindri
Purpose: The global financial services business has been transformed by Blockchain technology, making it safer and more efficient. Keeping this fact in mind, the authors will…
Abstract
Purpose: The global financial services business has been transformed by Blockchain technology, making it safer and more efficient. Keeping this fact in mind, the authors will study how Blockchain technology improves financial services, including the banking and insurance sectors. The risks and roadblocks in the path of Blockchain adoption in financial services will also be discussed.
Need of the Study: Blockchain operates without any central authority. Instead, it could be understood as a transaction-containing ledger shared among many users. The adoption of Blockchain is gaining traction in every field, but still, a sense of doubt about its reliability can be observed among ordinary people. Thus, an investigation of the operational intricacies and technicalities could assist in clarifying the confusion associated with this technology.
Methodology: To achieve the aims mentioned above, an exploratory research design involving a review of the secondary data linked with the implementation and impact of Blockchain technology in the domain of finance is conducted.
Findings: The mode of operation of Blockchain technology is thoroughly explained, along with the influence it has exercised in the financial domain in recent years.
Practical Implications: The findings of this study can mainly assist global investors and users worldwide by clarifying the concept and operations of Blockchain technology. Also, it could guide future studies assessing the role of Blockchain in the financial domain.
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Yingli Wang, Jeong Hugh Han and Paul Beynon-Davies
This paper aims to investigate the way in which blockchain technology is likely to influence future supply chain practices and policies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the way in which blockchain technology is likely to influence future supply chain practices and policies.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of both academic and practitioner literature was conducted. Multiple accounts of blockchain adoption within industry were also consulted to gain further insight.
Findings
While blockchain technologies remain in their infancy, they are gaining momentum within supply chains, trust being the predominant factor driving their adoption. The value of such technologies for supply chain management lies in four areas: extended visibility and traceability, supply chain digitalisation and disintermediation, improved data security and smart contracts. Several challenges and gaps in understanding and opportunities for further research are identified by this research. How a blockchain-enabled supply chain should be configured has also been explored from a design perspective.
Research limitations/implications
This systematic review focuses on the diffusion of blockchain technology within supply chains, and great care was taken in selecting search terms. However, the authors acknowledge that their choice of terms may have excluded certain blockchain articles from this review.
Practical implications
This paper offers valuable insight for supply chain practitioners into how blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt existing supply chain provisions as well as a number of challenges to its successful diffusion.
Social implications
The paper debates the poential social and economic impact brought by blockchain.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first studies to examine the current state of blockchain diffusion within supply chains. It lays a firm foundation for future research.
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Nowadays, to operate securely and legally and to achieve business objectives, secure valuable assets and support uninterrupted business processes, all organizations need to match…
Abstract
Purpose
Nowadays, to operate securely and legally and to achieve business objectives, secure valuable assets and support uninterrupted business processes, all organizations need to match a lot of internal and external compliance regulations such as laws, standards, guidelines, policies, specifications and procedures. An integrated system able to manage information security (IS) for their intranets in the new cyberspace while processing tremendous amounts of IS-related data coming in various formats is required as never before. These data, after being collected and analyzed, should be evaluated in real-time from an IS incident viewpoint, to identify an incident’s source, consider its type, weigh its consequences, visualize its vector, associate all target systems, prioritize countermeasures and offer mitigation solutions with weighted impact relevance. Different security information and event management (SIEM) systems cope with this routine and usually complicated work by rapid detection of IS incidents and further appropriate response. Modern challenges dictate the need to build these systems using advanced technologies such as the blockchain (BC) technologies (BCTs). The purpose of this study is to design a new BC-based SIEM 3.0 system and propose a methodology for its evaluation.
Design/methodology/approach
Modern challenges dictate the need to build these systems using advanced technologies such as the BC technologies. Many internet resources argue that the BCT suits the intrusion detection objectives very well, but they do not mention how to implement it.
Findings
After a brief analysis of the BC concept and the evolution of SIEM systems, this paper presents the main ideas on designing the next-generation BC-based SIEM 3.0 systems, for the first time in open access publications, including a convolution method for solving the scalability issue for ever-growing BC size. This new approach makes it possible not to simply modify SIEM systems in an evolutionary manner, but to bring their next generation to a qualitatively new and higher level of IS event management in the future.
Research limitations/implications
The most important area of the future work is to bring this proposed system to life. The implementation, deployment and testing onto a real-world network would also allow people to see its viability or show that a more sophisticated model should be worked out. After developing the design basics, we are ready to determine the directions of the most promising studies. What are the main criteria and principles, according to which the organization will select events from PEL for creating one BC block? What is the optimal number of nodes in the organization’s BC, depending on its network assets, services provided and the number of events that occur in its network? How to build and host the SIEM 3.0 BC infrastructure? How to arrange streaming analytics of block’s content containing events taking place in the network? How to design the BC middleware as software that enables staff to interact with BC blocks to provide services like IS events correlation? How to visualize the results obtained to find insights and patterns in historical BC data for better IS management? How to predict the emergence of IS events in the future? This list of questions can be continued indefinitely for a full-fledged design of SIEM 3.0.
Practical implications
This paper shows the full applicability of the BC concept to the creation of the next-generation SIEM 3.0 systems that are designed to detect IS incidents in a modern, fully interconnected organization’s network environment. The authors’ attempt to begin with a detailed description of the basics for a BC-based SIEM 3.0 system design is presented, as well as the evaluation methodology for the resulting product.
Originality/value
The authors believe that their new revolutionary approach makes it possible not to simply modify SIEM systems in an evolutionary manner, but to bring their next generation to a qualitatively new and higher level of IS event management in the future. They hope that this paper will evoke a lively response in this segment of the security controls market from both theorists and direct developers of living systems that will implement the above approach.
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