Blockchain innovations: Technological applications and management challenges
Introduction
The date was 31 October 2008 when Bitcoin first entered our modern lexicon and stake a place within our generational zeitgeist [1]. Underneath the 9-page white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto was the attempt to create a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that could bypass the need for a third party like a financial institution [2]. Because the idea was to dispense with the need of a third party like a bank to serve as the final arbitrator of the official state of the network, there is a need for the creation of time-stamped, immutable, and auditable records of all transactions as an official record of the state of the network in order for the network to move forward at any point of time. Even though Satoshi did not refer to the concept of the creation of time-stamped, immutable, auditable records as the blockchain at that time, the term nevertheless emerged as the most organic and logical description of this method of keeping records.
There were extensive claims of many scholars and practitioners who have called the blockchain technology as an innovation that could disrupt our economies and societies [3] and solving a lot of inefficiencies caused by rent-seeking behaviors by middlepersons of necessities and often by their opaqueness with which they operate. However there have been great difficulties for research in the blockchain space within the field of Information Systems to make serious theoretical inroads. The editors of the special issue are not the only ones who observed this as others such as Beck et al. [4] and Rossi et al. [5] have also made those same observations. There have been several calls for papers in special issues that are related to blockchain research in information systems [5] and others that include blockchains and cryptocurrencies under the general topic of financial information systems and the fintech revolution [6,7].
As we noted in our call for paper, while we have been inundated with the narrative that the blockchain technology could generate enormous impacts in many aspects of our lives [8,9], research on the blockchain technology in the Information Systems discipline is relatively restricted to exploring applications that are built on the blockchain or use cases that exploit specific characteristics of the blockchain. Many of the previous research into blockchain has been centered around treating blockchain as a database with the added characteristics that business researchers deem to be desirable such the assurance of immutable transactional records [10].
Through this special issue, our aim is to take stock of the current state of research in this space and use it to provide a platform that together with this editorial could ignite a new wave of research into this exciting area. After multiple rigorous review cycles, the special issue includes nine papers that cover a myriad of blockchain-related topics. Specifically, it is heartening that some of the articles in this special issue have gone beyond the framework as proposed by Rossi et al. [5] that sought to provide a roadmap for the IS discipline's in blockchain research. We can see a progression of research towards legitimatizing blockchain innovations and acknowledging the need to incorporate them into society and business organizations through examination of the interactions between organizations and their adoption of blockchain innovations [11] as well as opening a pathway for blockchain innovations to gain compliance and legitimacy with regulators [12].
This editorial is structured as follows. In Section 2, we will introduce the articles within the special issue and highlight their insights. Next in Section 3, we will provide a delineation through a typology of categories under which the different research articles fall. This typology exists at an abstract level but is sufficiently specific to cover the logical set of areas into which research in blockchain innovations would fall. Through the typology we will, in Section 4, analyze and prognosticate possible research agenda that could further our knowledge on blockchain as a key piece of technology that will open up new research domains for information systems scholars. We will conclude in Section 5.
Section snippets
Articles in the special issue
The first two articles in the special issue are “Information Disclosure and Blockchain Technology Adoption Strategy for Competing Platforms” and “Organizations’ Approaches to Blockchain: A Critical Realist Perspective”. In the former, the authors examined through economic modeling, the costs for organizations in adoption blockchain technology to authenticate and disclose provenance of products sold on e-commerce platforms [13] in understanding the conditions under which these platforms would
Typology to categorize research articles
Broadly speaking, the 9 articles listed above that have been accepted in the special issue can be categorized as follows. Articles one and two are related to (1) Organization behavior towards blockchain innovations. Articles three and four are related to (2) Regulatory compliance of blockchain innovations. Articles five, six, and seven pointed to the (3) Business use cases and applications of blockchain innovations. Article eight touches on (4) Skillsets for blockchain innovations, and article
Future research on blockchain innovations
The typology that arises from the categorization of the articles accepted in the special issue is a fairly comprehensive set of broad categories that are representative of the blockchain research domain. This typology is an extension of the framework proposed by Rossi et al. [5] in their editorial for the special issue on blockchain research in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems where it was restricted to the protocol and application layer of the blockchain paradigm. The
Conclusion
In conclusion, this special issue presents the latest research that mirrors the trends where blockchain innovations and research have transcended beyond being just hype and a fad to a mainstay recognized by business and society. This special issue has included articles that cover wide-ranging domains of blockchain research. The special issue extends the siloed nature of blockchain research in the early days within IS research, where research was limited to blockchain community governance and
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