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Buildings 2021, 11, 283. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11070283 www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings
Review
The Role of Blockchain Technology in Augmenting Supply
Chain Resilience to Cybercrime
Aya Bayramova, David J. Edwards * and Chris Roberts
Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, City Centre Campus, Birmingham City University,
Millennium Point, Birmingham B4 7XG, UK; ayabayramova@gmail.com (A.B.); chri51988@live.com (C.R.)
* Correspondence: drdavidedwards@aol.com
Abstract: Using a systematic review of literature, this study identifies the potential impact of block-
chain solutions for augmenting supply chain resilience (SCR) to cybercrime. This rich literature syn-
thesis forms the basis of a novel theoretical framework that provides guidance and insight for block-
chain adopters and vendors as well as delineate palpable benefits of this novel technology. An in-
terpretivist philosophical design and inductive reasoning are adopted to conduct the systematic
review of literature. A total of 867 papers were retrieved from Scopus database between the years
of 2016 and 2020 and subsequently analysed via abductive reasoning, grounded theory and a the-
matic meta-analysis; where the latter was achieved using a scientometric approach and software
tools such as VOS viewer and NVivo. Scientometric analysis revealed the most prolific countries,
sources, publications and authors who reside at the vanguard of blockchain developments and
adoption. Subsequent grounded theory analysis identified six main clusters of research endeavour
viz: “case study”, “challenges and opportunity”, “traceability”, “smart contract” “blockchain and
IoT” and “data security”. From 28 SCR metrics identified within literature, five were found to have
been positively impacted by blockchain technology solutions, namely: “visibility”, “collaboration”,
“integration”, “risk management” and “information sharing.” Prominent applications of blockchain
technology in practice were “traceability systems” and “smart contracts” which are often imple-
mented separately or in combination and primarily in food supply chains. This research constitutes
the first study to critically synthesise extant literature for evaluation of blockchain solutions’ impli-
cation on SCR metrics. New perspectives obtained provided a basis for the novel theoretical frame-
work for implementation that will be valued by software developers and adopting organizations,
whilst creating new direction for researchers interested in blockchain technology.
Keywords: blockchain technology; supply chain resilience; cybersecurity; resilience metrics
1. Introduction
Since the discovery of blockchain technology’s viability in environments other than
original cryptocurrency practices, applications have exponentially proliferated in diverse
industrial sectors such as: insurance [1]; content distribution [2]; logistics [3,4]; travel [5];
healthcare [6,7]; e-commerce [8]; and banking systems [9]. Novel supply chain applica-
tions are no exception and various work has been undertaken to explore its applications
primarily on food supply chains, particularly emphasizing product traceability and visi-
bility enhancement features cf. [10,11]. Other researchers such as Queiroz et al. [2], Saw-
yerr and Harrison [12] and Maesa and Mori [13] studied blockchain’s innate immutability
aspects of stored transactional data.
However, with multitudinous and largely unforeseen disturbances to global supply
chains (e.g., the Global Financial Crises in 2008 [14]; the 9–11 terrorist attack [15,16] and
Covid-19 pandemic [17,18]) engenders the necessity to evaluate the impact of technolog-
ical advancements on supply chains in times of disruption rather than solely measuring
Citation: Bayramova, A.; Edwards,
D.J.; Roberts, C. The Role of
Blockchain Technology in
Augmenting Supply Chain
Resilience to Cybercrime.
Buildings 2021, 11, 283. https://
doi.org/10.3390/buildings11070283
Academic Editor: David Arditi
Received: 2 June 2021
Accepted: 27 June 2021
Published: 30 June 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu-
tral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Li-
censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and con-
ditions of the Creative Commons At-
tribution (CC BY) license (http://crea-
tivecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 2 of 20
their impact in a “business as usual” scenario [19,20]. Researchers studying the risks as-
sociated with these unforeseen disruptions, categorize them into two major dichotomous
group of “external” and “internal” risk groups [21–23]. External risks are associated with
unexpected events occurring extrinsically that stifle the supply chain system and induce
a ripple effect (throughout the supply chain) that prolong the recovery from the disrup-
tion [21,22]. Examples of external risks include force majeure (e.g., earthquakes, hurri-
canes and floods) but also man-made catastrophes (e.g., computer viruses, terrorist at-
tacks, economic turbulence or recession) [19,20]. These risks not only have the inherent
capacity to create operational disruptions and shortages to supply chain participants, but
also threatens an organisation’s financial and human resources such that distribution,
transportation and communication suffers immeasurably [20]. External risks are largely
unavoidable and hence, organisations can only prepare to mitigate their disruption vis-à-
vis eliminate them [23]. Conversely, internal risks are associated with uncertainties of sup-
ply-demand coordination events or unprecedented change in product specifications
[20,24]. Forrester [25] defined the “bullwhip effect” concept in supply chains as depicting
fluctuations in purchasing an inventory to fulfil customer demand that accumulates to-
wards the upstream of a supply chain. This concept occurs when a supplier’s order is
larger than a buyer’s order and is often caused by poor quality of information sharing,
erroneous perceived demand and delays in supply chains [26]. Other examples of internal
risks are information technology problems or breakdowns, uncertainties in lead times,
power outages, equipment malfunctions and systemic failures [27].
These numerous internal and external risks (and their frequency of occurrence) in-
crease the vulnerability of supply chains and necessitate development of risk mitigation
methods and strategies to engender organisational resilience and preparedness [20,28].
Yet, despite these risks elucidated upon, circa 69% of organisations globally have no com-
plete visibility of their supply chains [29] and 30% of organisations fail to analyse the
source of disruptions [30]. These compelling statistics engender the need for novel studies
that answer the question: what are the blockchain technology applications that could po-
tentially augment supply chain resilience (SCR) against disruption risks? Therefore, this
research seeks to define and delineate the potential impact of these applications and their
adoption(s) on SCR metrics using a scientometric review of existing literature. Concomi-
tant research objectives are to: provide much needed guidance on blockchain applications
for industry practitioners and for organisations planning to adopt them; and create a cyber
threat map (as a novel theoretical framework) by identifying common cyber threats ac-
cording to their target types and their current solutions to contrast those solutions with
blockchain potentials. New insights (including a novel framework) generated will serve
to incite wider polemic debate but will also provide much needed guidance and clarifica-
tion for software developers and adopting organizations.
2. Methodology
The overarching epistemological design adopted a mixed philosophical stance of in-
terpretivism and post-positivism cf. [31–34] to systematically analyse extant literature us-
ing a scientometric approach (a sub-branch of bibliometrics) cf. [35–38]. As a philosophical
approach, interpretivism seeks to understand and interpret a phenomenon under investi-
gation from different points of view in a subjective way [39,40]. Conversely, postpositiv-
ism is an approach of pursuing objectivity to reduce the potential effect of researchers’
bias by applying both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis [41]; in this
present study using meta-data analysis. Objectivity in postpositivist paradigm results in
establishing nascent theory that enables building categories and dimensions from an ir-
regular data set [42]. Mixed philosophies are widely used within contemporary construc-
tion and project management literature. For example, Ghosh et al. [43] explored patterns
and trends in the application of the internet of things (IoT) research to identify future ap-
plications in the construction industry; and Oshodi et al. [44] conducted a systematic re-
view of construction output modelling techniques. Given the investigative nature of this
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 3 of 20
research, inductive and abductive reasoning [39,45] are adopted to deduce comprehensive
conclusions based upon theoretical understanding [40] of blockchain technology applica-
tions’ impact on SCR. From an approach and methods perspective, the research is con-
ducted in two consecutive stages (refer to Figure 1); where stage one adopts inductive
reasoning to conduct a meta-analysis of literature (as a secondary data source) and stage
two builds upon this body of knowledge using abductive reasoning and grounded theory.
Figure 1. Research processes and their outcomes.
2.1. Meta-Analysis Technique
Meta-analysis is a form of inquiry in which studies about investigated phenomenon
(each representing a research unit) are aggregated and integrated to summarise literature
based on relationships between different research items [46]. Hunter and Schmidt [47]
proffer that this method creates cumulative knowledge by eliminating potential distortive
effects of primary research whilst maintaining track of ongoing research. To facilitate this
first stage, the software tool VOS viewer with functionalities of visualizing, exploring and
creating bibliometric networks was adopted [48]. Bibliometric data was sourced from Sco-
pus database with the search rules of TITLE-ABS-KEY (blockchain AND technology AND
in AND supply AND chains) AND (EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2021)) AND (EXCLUDE
(SRCTYPE, “k”) OR EXCLUDE (SRCTYPE, “b”) OR EXCLUDE (SRCTYPE, “d”)) AND
(EXCLUDE (LANGUAGE, “Chinese”) OR EXCLUDE (LANGUAGE, “Spanish”) OR EX-
CLUDE (LANGUAGE, “German”) OR EXCLUDE (LANGUAGE, “French”)). All these
search criteria were selected to source a critical mass of existing publications within the
scientific community to perform substantiated literature analysis from different perspec-
tives. This refined search provided 867 publications with 44.2% of conference papers, fol-
lowed by 44.6% of journal articles, excluding: book series; trading journals; books; and 15
papers that were translated from Chinese, Spanish, German and French. While there was
no limit set for “date range” except for excluding 2021, year of publication for pertinent
papers started from 2016. Conference papers were sampled because the rapid progress of
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 4 of 20
blockchain developments and relatively expedient publication rates means that many re-
searchers (particularly in information technology fields of science) choose to publish their
work at these events.
2.2. Grounded Theory Technique
Grounded theory analysis was conducted using computer-assisted qualitative data
analysis software (CAQDAS) called NVivo to provide a deeper and richer interrogation
of the prevailing academic discourse. To narrow the scope of data analysis, this stage com-
menced with thematic analysis of bibliometric data retrieved from Scopus journal data-
base (obtained from stage 1). All data retrieved were analysed manually in a Microsoft
Excel spreadsheet by colour-coding each emerging theme through screening the titles and
abstracts of each publication and clustering them together. From initially sourced 867 pub-
lications, papers with irrelevant application areas (such as rental service, auditing and
public voting) were excluded. Similarly, papers based on generic supply chain manage-
ment and risk management matters were excepted from the dataset. Based on these
screening and filtering processes, thematical clusters of ‘case study’ (with 89 papers) and
‘data security’ (with 27 papers) were selected to further study using grounded theory
analysis. All the publications in those clusters were retrieved by locating their digital ob-
ject identifier (DOI) addresses except for those without access or link.
Grounded theory is an approach of analysing data by fragmenting them using key
processes of ‘coding’, ‘theoretical sampling’ and ‘theoretical saturation’ [39]. The first
stage of open coding reveals emerging concepts in the publications [39]. This approach of
data collection (by open coding through selected publications) and analysis is referred as
a “theoretical sampling” which is distinguished from other sampling approaches because
it emphasises selection of data to generate a theoretical understanding rather than focus-
ing on statistical adequacy of a sample [49]. Further these concepts are aggregated to
achieve theoretical saturation, via which categories are generated. Based on these concepts
and categories the guidance note of blockchain application for vendors and potential
adopters was subsequently generated.
3. Supply Chain Resilience
Globalization has stimulated organisations to change their strategies to expedite re-
sponse time and consequently, conventional competition amongst organizations has been
transformed into a race between whole supply chains that foregrounded supply chain
management and SCR [27,50]. A supply chain is a group of specialists such as supplier,
manufacturer, distributor and retailer that create chains through service and production
by maintaining a flow of goods and information [50]. It comprises a set of facilities that
help in purchasing required materials, transforming them into intermediate or finished
goods, eventually distributing these goods to customers [51]. Conversely, supply chain
management characterizes planning and control of all business processes, activities re-
garding the sourcing, inventory and logistics along with coordination and collaboration
with other participants in the supply chain [52]. The main objective of supply chain man-
agement is to deliver superior customer value by integrating supply and demand man-
agement within each organisation as well as whole supply chains [17]. However, the for-
mation of supply chains is scattered globally with different parts of the chain located in
different geographical locations; this increases supply chains’ vulnerability to disruptions
[12,23,53]. This is because, every actor in the supply chain is affected differently by exter-
nal impacts such as environmental, social, economic and political factors [17,54]. Mitiga-
tion or eradication of such risks, can be achieved by integration of the entire supply net-
work and by improving transparency and visibility amongst supply chain participants,
which eventually augments SCR [22]. The term resilience has been used in different sub-
jects such as psychology, ecology, economy, social and organisational concepts to denote
the ability of a given system to return to a state of equilibrium after temporary disturbance
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 5 of 20
[28]. While, some authors cf. [55,56] analogously accepted this definition in SCR area, oth-
ers cf. [28,57] define resilience in supply chain as a capability of supply chains to develop
preparedness against unforeseen disruptions to respond in a resourceful and timely man-
ner and restore their former condition or preferably in an improved state.
Resilience in supply chains mitigates negative impacts of contingencies by identify-
ing and adopting strategies and apposite plan of actions to recover to its original or better
state [20]. A myriad of systematic literature review studies have been conducted to outline
SCR strategies, metrics, capabilities and performance measures to identify barriers and
enablers to resilience in supply chains [58]. A study by Bhamra et al. [59] discusses litera-
ture about resilience in small-to-medium-enterprises (SMEs) during the 1976–2010
timespan and accentuate on the importance of more case-study based empirical studies.
Contrary to this view, scholars such as Pereira et al. [60], Tukamuhabwa et al. [21], Ali et
al. [58] note the inadequacy of theoretical applications in SCR studies, while Datta [61]
proposes using more context-specific interventions. Both Linnenluecke [62] and Sawyerr
and Harrison [12] examine high reliability theories stressing the practicality of insights
from high reliability studies for SCR improvement.
3.1. Supply Chain Resilience Metrics
Measuring resilience in supply chains has stimulated, scholars to define and deline-
ate numerous metrics differently. Common terminologies used by authors to describe
SCR metrics include: core dimension [63]; antecedents [20,57,64]; capabilities [65,66]; ena-
blers [60,67]; competencies [68]; elements [55,58,69,70]; formative elements [12,65]; and
dimensions [71]. Sawyerr and Harrison [12] conclude that from thirteen formative ele-
ments of SCR, ‘redundancy’, ‘human resource management’, ‘collaboration’, ‘agility’,
‘flexibility’, ‘culture’ and ‘risk avoidance’ resilience metrics can be applied to supply
chains. The findings indicate that ‘collaboration’ with supply chain partners in the event
of a disruption is the first prerequisite, because it improves other elements of resilience
such as ‘visibility’, ‘awareness’ and ‘decision making’. More recent research by Shekarian
and Parast [20] assess the impact of four common resilience elements, namely: ‘flexibility’,
‘agility’, ‘redundancy’ and ‘collaboration’ on alleviating demand, supply, process, control
and environmental risks. Their findings [20] state that ‘collaboration’ is the most im-
portant strategy to cope with control disruptions, while ’flexibility’ is found to be essential
to mitigate demand, supply, process and environmental risks in supply chains. Con-
versely, Karl et al. [27] categorize thirteen elements of resilience into ‘pre-disruption’,
‘during-disruption’ and ‘post-disruption’ phases and analyse their relationship with ten
common non-financial key performance indicators (KPI) of organizations. Using co-oc-
currence analysis, the authors [27] establish that ‘financial strength’ and ‘visibility’ resili-
ence elements have no link to any organisational KPIs, whereas, ‘knowledge manage-
ment’ present the highest co-occurrence with KPIs.
3.2. Blockchain Technology
According to Yoo [72] blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that allows par-
ticipants in a network to exchange various transactional data between them. This distrib-
uted database maintains a constantly growing list of information records in a decentral-
ized way, forming blocks that are protected against tampering and adjustments [72,73].
Blockchain technology is a platform on which various services and applications can be
constructed [74]. Depending on the level of accessibility, this platform is differentiated
with public, private and consortium types [75]. As the name suggests, public blockchain
is a permissionless platform that is openly accessible to anyone to join the network,
whereas a private type platform requires permission from network participants to join
[76]. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the earliest and most widespread examples of a public type
blockchain [77,78]. A consortium type blockchain is a hybrid approach of public and pri-
vate platforms where network access is allocated to a group of pre-defined members
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 6 of 20
[76,79]. Common aspects (or features) of blockchain technology adopted throughout in-
dustry are ‘trust’, ‘data security’, ‘traceability’, ‘smart contract’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘im-
mutability’ [73]. Given this variety of features, extant literature claims that blockchain
technology will transform businesses and improve the integration of economic and legal
processes in the digital world [80,81]. Specifically, huge potential is anticipated in the au-
tomation of activities that require disintermediation to reduce the number of intermedi-
aries between producer and consumers during investments made, thus offering greater
security and protection against cybercrime [1,82].
4. Analysis and Findings
Network maps of scientometric data generated in VOS viewer comprise nodes signi-
fying different items that present an object of interest such as publications, researchers,
countries or keywords [35,83,84]. Generally, a map subsumes only one type of item hence,
it is uncommon to incorporate, for instance, both publications and keywords in one net-
work map [48]. The size of the network nodes conveys the numerical value of the item to
be investigated: the greater the number of certain items occurring, the bigger the nodes
[48]. Relationships between those nodes are depicted through links that connect pairs of
investigated items. Links symbolize the strength or weight of a connection and therefore,
in case the link between items has the strength of one, VOS viewer does not display the
strength of link. Depending on the items being presented in those nodes, the links indi-
cates different connections such as: bibliographic coupling links between publications, co-
occurrence links between keywords or co-authorship links between researchers [48]. Sim-
ilar to nodes, each map encompasses only one type of link between any pair of items. VOS
viewer allows to create a citation, bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence, co-au-
thorship and co-citation analysis based on bibliometric data. For this present study cita-
tion analysis on ‘sources’, ‘documents’ and ‘authors’ units, along with, co-occurrence anal-
ysis on ‘all keywords’ unit had been selected.
4.1. Co-Occurrence of Keywords
Visualization of keywords in a visualisation network provides a comprehensive im-
age of existing knowledge and signposts the direction in which current studies are moving
[85,86]. The network consists of nodes representing the volume of co-occurring keywords
and links portraying the weight or number of publications in which two keywords occur
together. With the purpose of achieving rich and comprehensive depiction of keywords
in a co-occurrence map, ‘all keywords’ was selected instead of ‘authors’ keywords’, as
building a network on authors’ keywords is constrained by authors’ knowledge in terms
of the number/range of word selections. Therefore, selecting all keywords is preferable
approach, except for the situation when network map turns unmanageable and illegible
because of the overflow of dataset. The resultant network map illustrated in Figure 2 con-
sists of 4682 items, 61,338 links and 64 clusters.
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 7 of 20
Figure 2. Overlay visualisation of co-occurrence of all keywords in the field of blockchain technology in supply chains.
From the list of keywords prior to network construction, terms ‘blockchain’, ‘block-
chain technology’, ‘supply chain’, ‘supply chain’ and ‘supply chain management’ were
purposefully eliminated from the list to improve visualisation. The network map reveals
terms viz. ‘internet of things’ (IoT), ‘3D printing’, ‘digital storage’ and ‘tracking systems’
to be predominate in the field highlighting the popularity of blockchain adoption in com-
bination with those technological developments and its main usage in terms of tracking
and tracing the goods in supply chains. All four keywords tend to occur particularly in
2018 and in the beginning of 2019 based on the colour-coded nodes. However, most recent
keywords in bright yellow nodes exhibit the potential shift in the research focus. Specifi-
cally, ‘environmental technology’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainability’, ‘carbon
emission’ and ‘sustainable supply chains’ are the most recent keywords in bigger yellow
nodes suggesting more recent momentum in the field towards sustainability concerns
from earlier studies into cybercrime.
4.2. Key Authors, Papers, Countries and Journals
Data included in Table 1 describes the top ten most prolific sources, authors and
countries and top ten mostly cited sources, authors and papers. Data was extracted from
VOS viewer in the process of citation analysis and was manually sorted in a Microsoft
Excel spreadsheet. Countries such as United States, India, United Kingdom and China are
the most prominent in terms of publications and perhaps reflects the proportionate num-
ber of supply chains across those countries. As Singh et al. [50] suggest, most global sup-
ply chains are in USA, India, UK, China and Germany, which makes these countries most
attracted to the field of supply chains and associated advanced technological develop-
ments in supply chains that could improve organisational performance. Additionally, an
overlay visualisation of these indicators during citation analysis revealed that papers of
those countries are predominantly from the period of 2018–2019 years, whereas develop-
ing countries such as Bangladesh, Peru, Chile, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey and Tunis have
conducted and published studies predominantly in 2020. This geographical expansion
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 8 of 20
proves that the proliferation of blockchain adoption and interest across all continents has
gathered momentum but that developing countries lag behind this development pace.
Table 1. Key countries, sources, authors, documents [87–96].
Top Ten Most Prolific Sources, Authors and Countries in Descending Order
Sources
Papers
Author
Papers
Countries
Papers
IEEE Access
35
Li Z.
10
United States
153
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
22
Choi T.M.
9
China
126
Sustainability (Switzerland)
18
Wang Y.
9
India
117
International Journal of Production Research
17
Kumar A.
8
United Kingdom
73
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental
Science
17
Li J.
8
Germany
48
International Journal of Information Management
13
Queiroz M.M.
7
Australia
44
CEUR Workshop Proceedings
10
Sarkis J.
7
Italy
35
IFAC- Papers Online
9
Wang X.
7
Canada
31
Supply Chain Management
8
Gunasekaran
A.
6
Korea
29
International Journal of Production Economics
8
Jayaraman R.
6
France
25
Top ten most cited sources, authors and documents in descending order
Sources
Citations
Authors
Citations
Documents
Citatio
ns
IEEE Access
1118
Tian F.
643
Mengelkamp et
al. [87]
472
International Journal of Production Research
1028
Sarkis J.
511
Tian [88]
422
International Journal of Information Management
597
Kouhizadeh M.
488
Saberi et al. [89]
340
Applied Energy
472
Gärttner J.
472
Casino et al. [90]
275
Supply Chain Management
452
Kessler S.
472
Ivanov et al. [91]
239
13th International Conference on Service Systems
and Service Management-2016
422
Mengelkamp E.
472
Tian [92]
221
Sustainability (Switzerland)
308
Orsini L.
472
Kim and
Laskowski [93]
187
Telematics and Informatics
275
Rock K.
472
Meng et al. [94]
177
Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and
Management
270
Weinhardt C.
472
Kshetri [95]
176
International Journal of Production Economics
259
Wang Y.
430
Bocek et al. [96]
169
Not surprisingly, ‘IEEE Access’ (an open-source and peer-reviewed journal) domi-
nates the field with 35 publications (indicated in the first section of Table 1) and 1118 cita-
tions (in the second section of Table 1), as blockchain technology’s applications in terms
of ‘data security’, ‘smart contracts’ and ‘distributed ledger platform’ attract more research-
ers from the technology field. IEEE Access is an electronic-archival journal published by
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that presents the results of research
and developments across electronics engineering field of interest [97]. Based on the net-
work visualisation map, the sources such as ‘International Journal of Information Man-
agement’ with 13 publications and ‘International Journal of Production Research’ with 17
publications have the most recent publications in this field, alongside being in the most
productive top ten journals list.
The most prolific author in the field is Li, Z. with 10 papers, followed by Choi, T. and
Wang, Y. with 9 papers in the field. Li, Z. is an academic from Guangdong University of
Technology in China, renowned in Engineering, Computer Science and Social Sciences
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 9 of 20
subject areas. Three of Li’s papers are on the traceability aspect of blockchain technology
in food supply chains, while six other publications are a combination of different block-
chain technology applications in industry and service. From the top ten list of authors
with the most publications, Li, Z. has collaborated with Queiroz, M. A. and a more recent
article by Li, Z. in the field of blockchain technology presents a content-analysis based
literature review of blockchain adoption in food supply chains and offers four benefits
and five associated challenges of blockchain adoption in this sector [73]. The four main
benefits of blockchain technology adoption were: ‘food traceability’; ‘recall efficiency’; ‘in-
formation transparency’; ‘efficiency combined with IoT’ while barriers to adoption were
listed as: ‘lack of deeper understanding of blockchain’; ‘raw data manipulation’; ‘getting
all stakeholders’; ‘buy-in unanimously’; ‘deficiency of regulation’ and ‘technology diffi-
culties’ [73]. In terms of highly cited documents in the field, an article by Mengelkamp et
al. [87] prevails placing all six authors (namely: Mengelkamp, E., Kessler, S., Gärttner, J.,
Orsini, L., Rock, K. and Weinhardt, C.) fourth after Tian, F. with 643 citations, Sarkis, J.
with 511 citations and Kouhizadeh, M. with 488 citations. Tian, F. has only two articles in
the field in 2016 and 2017, both of which are frequently cited by other academics. Both
studies are on applications of blockchain traceability feature in combination with IoT and
RFID in food supply chains. In contrast, the study by Mengelkamp et al. [87] is conducted
in blockchain based local energy trading. This case-study based research [87] concludes
that blockchain technology is appropriate to operate in a decentralized microgrid energy
market, as it meets their seven identified market components delineated upon in their
study’s framework.
4.3. Findings from Grounded Theory Analysis
Based on extensive manual screening of topics and abstracts mined from Scopus in
thematic analysis, the field of blockchain technology in supply chains generated six the-
matic clusters as illustrated in the Figure 3. Emergent themes of ‘case study’, ‘challenges
and opportunity’, ‘traceability’, ‘smart contract’, ‘blockchain and IoT’ and ‘data security’
have been observed. The graph demonstrates a trend of publications in each cluster re-
spectively which covers a timespan from 2016 and 2020.
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 10 of 20
Figure 3. Trend of publication number in identified clusters.
In order to maintain consistency between the aim of this study and processes taken
to achieve them, the ‘case study’ (with 89 papers) and ‘data security’ (with 27 papers)
thematic groups were selected to study in grounded theory analysis; albeit, only the case
study cluster was analysed further for this present research. During the analysis of the
‘case study’ cluster publications in NVivo, 19 nodes emerged to be nascent concepts in the
initial open-coding stage. As a result of iterative subsequent coding stages, concepts were
aggregated into categories. Consequently, three main categories of ‘case studies’, ‘appli-
cation of blockchain with other technologies’ and ‘blockchain technology in different in-
dustries’ were generated. In the ‘case study’ category different examples of blockchain
project (e.g., credit evaluation system [10]; tracking system for medicine traceability [79];
carbon trading, tracking [98]) in different industries (e.g., food supply chains, pharmaceu-
tical, shipping, construction and oil gas) were identified. Some of the examples were case
studies and pilot projects and others were various use cases that could be adopted as proof
of concepts that required further development and testing. Concepts such as ‘trust’, ‘trace-
ability’, ‘cybersecurity’, ‘smart contract’ and ‘distributed ledger technology’ were devel-
oping from the analysis to be the main features of blockchain technology. Further, all iden-
tified concepts and categories were analysed in cluster analysis (refer to Figure 4).
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 11 of 20
Figure 4. Clusters in grounded theory analysis.
The dendrogram was created selecting 33 most frequently occurring keywords with
minimum length of three words in NVivo word frequency query. Stemmed words with
similar meaning were filtered by adding them to ‘stop words list’. For a similarity metric
to form clusters ‘Pearson correlation coefficient’ was selected, which means that words
that have higher degree of similarity based on their occurrence and frequency are shown
clustered together and words with lower degree of similarity are displayed further apart.
The formation of these clusters demonstrates three main branches (in Figure 4) that de-
scribe blockchain technology’s main functions and their uses: ‘trust and transparency in
transactional use’, ‘data access and security use in public and private sectors’ and ‘smart
contract and traceability system use for process improvement and information sharing’.
From which the latter two branches together form the biggest cluster in the dendrogram
stating about the most frequently used application of blockchain technology. For finer
scrutiny of the impact of blockchain technology on SCR, keywords of SCR metrics were
analysed in word frequency as depicted in word cloud in the Figure 5 to contrast them
with the most cited 28 resilience metrics identified through preliminary literature review.
Based on this analysis, it can be concluded that resilience metrics such as ‘information
sharing’, ‘integration’, ‘risk management’, ‘visibility’ and ‘collaboration’ to be pivotal in
the times of disruption. Moreover, adoption of blockchain technology augments these
metrics by removing all the existing silos amongst supply chain participants and increas-
ing connectivity and visibility between them.
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 12 of 20
Figure 5. Word cloud depiction of supply chain resilience metrics in terms of their frequency of occurrence.
5. Discussion
Using both sets of analyses, it can be concluded that blockchain technology has im-
plications on SCR in terms of ‘visibility’, ‘risk management’, ‘integration’, ‘collaboration’
and ‘information sharing’. Other SCR metrics such as ‘agility’, ‘flexibility’, ‘company’s
knowledge’ and ‘redundancy’ were not at the centre of discussion by researchers who
were studying blockchain applications. The ‘visibility’ metric tends to be improved in the
cases of blockchain technology adoption in the form of traceability systems [80,99] whilst
‘information sharing’ and ‘collaboration’ metrics are enhanced in instances of blockchain
technology adoption for distributed ledger technology features [82,100]. However, there
are some opponents of this idea of improving interconnectivity who claim the ever-grow-
ing connectivity itself to be a precursor for the cyberspace disruption caused by cyber-
criminal attacks or cyber warfare [101]. Examples of cyber-attacks on financial entities’
and organisations’ information systems by targeting their: operational systems, data
server, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) control systems [101,102];
critical national infrastructure (CNI) [101]; industrial control systems (ICS) and internet of
things (IoT) [103,104]. Such attacks in the public sector have given rise to the question as
to whether blockchain technology is immune to criminal or nefarious activities in the dig-
ital world. Figure 6 depicts commonly known cyber-attacks (such as ransomware, Distrib-
uted Denial of Service (DDoS), phishing, IoT attacks, insider threat, AI/machine learning-
based attacks, spear-phishing and web-based attacks)—each of which has different targets
and different motives for interception or infiltration [105].
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 13 of 20
Figure 6. Common cyber-attack types categorized by their target types (people, hardware, software, network) and their
current solutions.
The figure was developed based on the ‘data security’ cluster publications that de-
scribe four main attack vectors namely: software, people, network and hardware that ad-
versaries exploit for data breach, data mining, cyber espionage, to obtain ransom or
merely to cause chaos and disruption [101–104]. From four potential attack vectors, tar-
geting people or staff of the organizations (e.g., by using phishing or spear-phishing tech-
nique) is the most vulnerable and easy threat vector for cyber-attackers [106]. In addition
to these potential vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks, there is another inherent downside in
traditional data storage method, namely: storing all critical digital assets in a centralized
way inadvertently creates a single point of failure and easy target for adversaries. As de-
scribed in the Figure 6, multiple prevention, detection or remediation control tools are
currently available to prevent already known cyber-attack types, yet there is no largely
offered solutions against unknown attacks. A myriad of research has been conducted in
this field; contrasting blockchain technology solutions with cloud computing [102,105] or
with traditional databases [107,108] and claiming that single-point-of-failure type data
storage practices lead to the breach of mission critical data. This in turn poses a tangible
threat to individuals, organization and consequently to the whole supply chains [102].
Because blockchain technology provides permanent record-keeping of all data with
their authorized entrance source in a tamper-proof and decentralized way, it retains the
intrinsic potential to address the issues associated with both easy attack vector and single-
point-of-failure weakness alluded earlier [107]. With blockchain technology all data
shared in a network are performed in an encrypted version which creates another layer of
protection against the intrusion or data breach that usually occurs on network level attack
vector. Single point of failure risk is eliminated with decentralization; while threat of in-
sider attack (from people attack vector) is eradicated with the traceability capability of
permanent record (supported by a digital signature feature) of all the transactions per-
formed by legitimate users in the permissioned network. However, despite all these po-
tential benefits of improving resilience against multiple occurring disruptions in the
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 14 of 20
‘physical’ and ‘digital world’, prevailing literature also reveals numerous challenges as-
sociated with blockchain implementation for both vendors and adopters. This problem
enhances the importance of developing guidance (as a theoretical framework) for poten-
tial adopters and vendors (refer to Figure 7).
Figure 7. Theoretical framework for blockchain technology adopters and vendors [81,95,109–114].
As the main success factor for new technology adoption is to prevent misalignment
between organizational requirements and technological propositions, potential adopters
should clearly define their own needs based on which select corresponding application
and functionalities of blockchain technology [81,108,110]. Similarly, vendors are required
to assess the suitability of organisations’ needs and available blockchain solutions [81,95].
For measuring a return on investment (ROI), the potential value and cost of new techno-
logical solution must be considered [111–113]. For instance, adopting a traceability system
is worthwhile for high value goods (such as diamonds) in order to prevent counterfeit [95]
or products with greater risk of contamination (such as medicine or dairy and meat prod-
ucts) [81,110]. Whereas, software developers or vendors should assess the feasibility and
adaptability level of the industry the adopter is operating in, to ensure the successful
adoption of proposed solution [109,110]. Lastly, it is compulsory for adopters to consider
interoperability of their selected blockchain solution within supply chains, as the merits
of this disruptive technology are leveraged through broad acceptance rather than being
limited to one organization only [109,113,114]. Moreover, vendors should evaluate the
technological maturity level of potential adopters for successful adoption of the technol-
ogy [110,113,114].
6. Conclusions
The findings of this present study suggest that the field of blockchain technology
remains embryonic and yet, the field is also rapidly evolving to meet societal, economic
and political needs. However, despite several introduced proposals and use cases by re-
searchers cf. [1,10,100,112,115,116] there is still a notable deficiency of applications of
blockchain technology in supply chains in real world contexts. Moreover, most use cases
lack standard methods to design and consequently validate the blockchain solutions [112].
According to Deloitte Insights [117] only 8% of blockchain projects are continued, whereas
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 15 of 20
the remaining initiatives tend to fail. This failure can perhaps be attributed to users (rather
than organizations) who are developing stand-alone blockchain applications instead of
foundational libraries that allow to create multiple applications [117]. Additionally, pro-
jects initiated by commercial organizations tend to have higher adoption rates compared
to users’ developments, as organizational blockchain projects are reportedly five times
more likely to be copied [117]. This present study also reveals the latest trends and poten-
tial gaps within this systematic literature review that employed meta-analysis, thematical
analysis and grounded theory analysis methods. The much-needed clarity provided by
this present study will enable both researchers and practitioners to review the blockchain
technology landscape and better understand developments in this field. Moreover, con-
tributions of the present study can be recognised by achievement of aims and objectives
delineated at the outset of this work, but also by practical implications in the form of cyber
threat map and guidance note that elucidates upon requirements for both software devel-
opers and vendors. Different perspectives are provided about the value of this technology,
not only to improve trust, time and cost effectiveness, but also to augment the overall SCR
in the times of internal or external disruptions.
However, all indicated contributions carry some constraints and limitations that
must be considered further. The guidance framework provided for adopters and vendors
represent an indicative list of guidance and is by no means exhaustive. This list of guid-
ance must be expanded in scope and enriched with more insights from applications of
blockchain technology in real-world contexts; such work would expand upon the aca-
demic research literature studied in this paper—some of which may be based on pure
theory not practice. With a substantial number of case studies in the field, studying the
impact of each specific applications of blockchain technology (such as smart contract,
traceability systems or DLT) on each resilience metrics could provide greater insights for
practitioners and create new directions for enthusiastic researchers. Furthermore, solu-
tions indicated in the cyber threat map are exclusively based on current tools and technol-
ogies used to prevent, detect or remediate the aftermath of disruption: the map does not
cover available frameworks or standards to manage the risk and threat of cyber-attack
occurrences.
Despite the initial precautious hype about blockchain technology with its introduc-
tion in cryptocurrency (specifically within the financial sector), its various applications
with promising features became the reason for its proliferation. On the contrary, banks,
insurers and brokerages have started to actively test ways of harnessing its merits. Be-
cause regulators have not yet determined certain standards around utilization of block-
chain-based systems, (which is one of the challenges of blockchain adoption) this initial
interest by financial sector could serve as a starting point for policymakers to develop and
apply formal regulations. Currently the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) is developing the ISO/TC307 standard that will contribute towards establishing mar-
ket confidence and augment proper adoption of the technology [118]. However, there re-
mains a caveat to blind widespread adoption of blockchain technology, as the most com-
mon reason of technology adoption projects’ failure tends to occur because of the misfit
between organisational requirements and technological proposition. Therefore, for suc-
cessful blockchain technology adoption, adopters should rigorously ascertain their own
needs first, then identify their functional and non-functional requirements from this tech-
nology. In conclusion, as with every technological adoption, the main point to consider is
that any technology is merely an enabler and not the panacea to a problem that organiza-
tions hope to tackle. Therefore, other organisational aspects such as processes and partic-
ularly people must be considered, as staff resistance to changes implemented is another
reason of most project failures. This aspect is particularly pivotal in blockchain adoption,
as its merits can be leveraged only when multiple stakeholders implement collectively.
Otherwise, interoperability of different blockchain applications could be another diffi-
culty they face.
Buildings 2021, 11, 283 16 of 20
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, A.B. and D.J.E.; methodology, A.B., D.J.E. and C.R.; val-
idation, A.B. and D.J.E.; formal analysis, A.B., D.J.E.; investigation, A.B. and D.J.E.; data curation,
A.B. and D.J.E.; writing—original draft preparation, A.B., D.J.E. and C.R.; writing—review and ed-
iting, A.B., D.J.E., C.R.; supervision, D.J.E., C.R.; project administration, A.B. and D.J.E. All authors
have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: The study was conducted according to an ethical protocol
that was approved by the Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment Faculty Academic
Ethics Committee) of Birmingham city University (Edwards/#7741/sub1/Mod/2020/Sep/CEBE
FAEC—BNV6200 ACM Version D.J. Edwards—13th October 2020).
Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the
study.
Data Availability Statement: Data is available from the corresponding author upon written request
and subject to review.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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