Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Auditing: Enhancing Transparency and Reducing Information Asymmetry in Accounting Systems

This article examines how blockchain technology may improve supply-chain auditing by strengthening traceability, evidential integrity, and the timeliness of accounting information while reducing information asymmetry among suppliers, focal firms, auditors, lenders, and investors. It develops an accounting-centered framework that distinguishes the technical immutability of recorded transactions from the reliability of the underlying events. Blockchain can create a shared, time-stamped record of inventory movements and related documents, but it cannot independently establish whether goods exist, quantities are accurate, or source data are truthful. Drawing on agency theory, information asymmetry, transaction cost economics, institutional theory, and the audit evidence framework, the article synthesizes recent research and professional guidance and proposes a testable model linking blockchain-enabled auditability to inventory audit quality and financial reporting transparency. The model treats data governance, system interoperability, internal controls, assurance design, and supplier participation as boundary conditions. It also identifies costs and risks, including implementation expense, privacy constraints, cyber vulnerabilities, oracle problems, consensus governance, and the danger of automating flawed processes. The methodological contribution is a replicable panel and field-study design with operational measures for inventory discrepancies, audit adjustments, audit effort, reporting timeliness, and disclosure quality. Because no original firm-level dataset or field experiment was supplied, the article does not report fabricated statistical estimates. Instead, it presents an evidence-based synthesis, hypotheses, implementation implications, and a research agenda for accounting and financial-technology scholarship.