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.

The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in freight transport as key enabler is well recognised. However the uptake of recent ICT advances for multimodal freight transport provisions in the UK and Europe has been slow. The aim of our paper is to explore the potential reasons for such a slow adoption and assess how recent technological advances such as cloud computing and Internet of Things might have changed the landscape and thus help to overcome these barriers. Via an extensive review of 33 EU framework programme projects, we are able to consolidate and present current major efforts in ICT developments in the freight multimodal transport setting at European level. We further discuss barriers inhibiting quick take-up of ICT applications in multimodal transport. Resolutions were then explored by reviewing four key ICT development trends recently emerging and evaluating their potential impact in reducing such barriers for deployment. Our contribution is two-fold: it advances current knowledge by presenting an up-to-date overview of existing and emerging ICT applications in the field of multimodal transport and barriers to e-enabled multimodal transport. It also captures some of the best practices in industry and aims to provoke a debate among practitioners and academics via the analysis of how innovative use of recent technological developments could potentially lower the barriers to multimodal ICT adoption and lead to a more integrated freight transport network. Therefore it lays the foundation for further research

While blockchain technologies are gaining momentum within supply chains, academic understanding of concrete, real-life design and implementation is still lagging, hence offering very limited insights into the true implications of blockchain technology on supply chains. This paper reports a two-year design science research (DSR) study of a smart contract initiative piloted by a consortium in the UK’s construction sector. We seek answers to the research question, ‘How should a blockchain enabled supply chain be designed?’ Guided by the theory of business model, we explore how a group of supply chain actors collectively designs and pilots a blockchain solution that addresses the supply chain transparency and provenance problem. Our research is one of the very few longitudinal empirical studies to offer in-depth evidence about how blockchain is deployed in complex multi-tier supply chain networks. In compliance with DSR research paradigm, we make contributions at three levels: designing and instantiating the blockchain architect and proving its utility in addressing the target problem; developing a set of design principles as a mid-range theory that can be applied and tested in different blockchain supply chain contexts; and refining and extending the kernel theory of business value at supply chain network level.

Supply chains (SC) are increasingly complex and if the resulting complexity is not managed effectively, it could lead to adverse consequences for the firm. The effect big data analytics (BDA) can have on managing distinct types of SC complexity is not well-understood in the extant literature. Based on a sample of 166 firms from Pakistan, this study empirically investigates the effects of BDA, and structural and dynamic SC complexities, on SC resilience. The study also investigates the role of BDA as a mediator between SC complexities and SC resilience. We find that structural SC complexity positively affects SC resilience, while there doesn’t seem to be a significant impact for dynamic SC complexity. We also find a mediating effect of BDA for structural and dynamic SC complexities on SC resilience. Our results contribute to the extant literature investigating BDA and SC resilience by offering a more nuanced understanding of distinct types of SC complexities. We establish a more critical understanding of the role of BDA in mediating the critical link between the two types of SC complexity and SC resilience. The proposed model highlights that there are both direct and indirect effects between structural SC complexity and SC resilience, however dynamic SC complexity only influences SC resilience via BDA. These findings provide strategic insights for SC executives as to where to invest in BDA to build much-needed SC resilience.