Theorizing Blockchain Technology for Supply Chain Management Practices: A Systematic Literature Review

Background: Blockchain adoption in supply chain management has attracted growing academic and practitioner attention; yet the impact varies significantly by implementation context, and the knowledge of the conditions driving this variation remain limited. Methods: This study conducts a systematic review of 112 papers to systematically synthesize how blockchain integration affects supply chain management practices (SCMPs), including upstream practices (e.g., supplier partnerships), downstream practices (e.g., customer relationships), and practices spanning both sides of the supply chain (e.g., information sharing and information quality). Results: The review finds that the benefit of blockchain adoption depends on a firm’s supply chain position, cost structures, and market conditions. Two theoretical perspectives are used to interpret these findings: the resource-based view, which viewed blockchain as a capability for integrating processes and transactions across organizations, and the practice-based view, which viewed blockchain as an imitable activity requiring context-specific deployment conditions. Fourteen propositions are developed to guide future research. Conclusions: This review provides practitioner guidance for evaluating when and how blockchain is likely to generate values across different SCMPs. Also, it provides researchers with a theory-grounding agenda for testing the proposed propositions empirically.