Globalisation of supply chains makes their management and control more difficult. Blockchain technology, as a distributed digital ledger technology which ensures transparency, traceability, and security, is showing promise for easing some global supply chain management problems. In this paper, blockchain technology and smart contracts are critically examined with potential application to supply chain management. Local and global government, community, and consumer pressures to meet sustainability goals prompt us to further investigate how blockchain can address and aid supply chain sustainability. Part of this critical examination is how blockchains, a potentially disruptive technology that is early in its evolution, can overcome many potential barriers. Four blockchain technology adoption barriers categories are introduced; inter-organisational, intra-organisational, technical, and external barriers. True blockchain-led transformation of business and supply chain is still in progress and in its early stages; we propose future research propositions and directions that can provide insights into overcoming barriers and adoption of blockchain technology for supply chain management.

This work is supported by the CIDA Tier 1 ECOPLAN China Project (S‐61562), the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project (70202006), the Social Science Foundation of China (03CJY001), The Ninth Huo‐yingdong Young Faculty Foundation (91082), the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, the Liaoning Doctoral Startup Project (2001102090), and a research grant by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.