Blockchain Technology in Operations & Supply Chain Management: A Content Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript provides a comprehensive review of the published research works at the intersection of supply chain/operations management and the blockchain. Presentation quality is relatively good, but I do not see any value-added considering that there are many reviews out there. I have listed my major concerns below.

1. With a simple Google Scholar search of the following keywords (blockchain supply chain management review), you can find 50 review articles on the very same topic. In particular, 2 of these works focused on the interdisciplinary nature of the subject. Why do we need one more review? you should make a very strong case for a somewhat different review. I am not convinced by the explanations starting from Line 70.
2. Regarding the RQs, all of them are very general and have been extensively studied by several of the articles I found with a simple Google Scholar search. You should reformulate the RQs and find a direction that has not been studied so far.
3. A new section, named "related review works" or something similar, should be added. In this section, you should conduct a critical and detailed review of the existing review papers published at the intersection of Blockchain and Supply Chain. A table should also be included to highlight the differences between your review and the existing ones. What you provided in Table 1 does not highlight the DIFFERENCES; it is just metadata of the existing reviews plus it's outdated. 
4. Why do we need a bibliometric analysis? should be clarified in the introduction section.
5. After reformulating the RQs, the contents of Section 4 should be reorganized accordingly. You should make sure that the authors can easily follow each part of the analysis is done for answering which research question and sub-question.
6. The presentation is of good quality, but value-added compared to what we already know and we already have is little. You have provided interesting insights for future research, but putting all you provided within a strong framework could add up to the existing body of knowledge; something that is not done so far; something that adds enough value to convince the reviewers that we actually need this LENS for reviewing the state-of-the-art.
7. The conclusion section should be improved by listing the limitations of your review (different from the limitations of the subject matter), and possible suggestions for bridging the gap.

Overall, I see the extensive work the authors have done for completing this research work. The presentation quality is not the most important thing for publishing an academic paper. I would like to see a real contribution, something that stands out of many published review works in the field. For this, you must (1) see what is the actual GAP by carefully reading the focus of the existing research works (2) reformulate your RQs such that the gap(s) are addressed, and most importantly (3) use a novel LENS in your review; it can be based on a theory. A new overview of the subject can add value and informs your potential readers. In its current form, your study is just another lengthy summary of blockchain technology in the supply chain literature.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

First of all, congratulations on your comprehensive paper. Your methodological approach is convincing, and the procedure is described quite comprehensively. However, the results were not discussed for their meaningfulness and no logical explanations for the results were given. Visually, the figures should be flush with the text (see fig. 4 and fig. 5).

The introduction should focus on the essentials and be shortened. In lines 115-148, BCT should be defined clearly. Different and conflicting definitions exist in the literature, so a definition valid for this paper is relevant. A reference to a good source would also suffice. 

Chapter 2.1 contains some inaccuracies:

"The transaction records are immutable as they are validated and later redundantly stored on every node in the peer-to-peer network." - The full nodes check the transactions in the blocks with their data state and select the blocks. They have a more active role. Furthermore, the consensus algorithm decides nothing, the nodes decide.

In line 119 you indicate that the BCT has evolved. Yet the BC of Bitcoin is still the same to a good approximation. You should explain this briefly, or mention the stages briefly.

Table 1 belongs in the appendix, in the text there should be only a very abbreviated table or only a reference to the table. 

Line 234: Why didn't you search for "distributed ledger" or "block chain" or "block-chain"? Are you sure this did not cause you to miss any sources? 

In table 2, you refer to IOTA. Strictly speaking, IOTA does not use blockchain, but you included it in your research anyway. It is incomprehensible why you focus on blockchains in the title, search only for blockchains in your search string, do not provide a clear definition, and then include blockchain-like concepts that are merely a distributed ledger. 

From chapter 4.2.1 on, you present 13 propositions. The comprehensibility of the creation of the propositions is insufficient. The causal relationship between the results of the CA and the propositions was not always recognizable. Furthermore, the propositions should be referred to in chapter 5.2. 

In the Limitations starting at line 1178, it should be added that the results were not causally validated or validated by technical explanations. Just because many authors mention a property of a BC does not necessarily mean that it occurs in practice in a real application. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In general I have found the paper to be well-organised, comprehensive and mostly clearly written. The topic is relevant and the goal of considering research areas and trends systematically is ambitious but justified.

I have a number of revisions for the authors to consider:

• Page 1 seems to make an assumption that research in BCT is situated in the fields of SCM and OM, thus the goal on Page 2 is to contribute to “state of the art research on BCT and SCM”. I do not dispute that BCT could be primarily rooted in these fields and thus I understand that Page 4 also notes that “Our study differs from the existing reviews by scope and methodology as we  investigate both SCM and OM with a thorough approach to capture the entire domain of BCT”.
• This assumption appears to have informed the methodology, for example Scopus was chosen “due to its comprehensive coverage of OM & SCM, information research and related disciplines.” The search string on p9 reflected the same choices.
• I find it unexpected and unsurprising, then, that Section 4.2.1 (Research focus) and Figure 6 show SCM, information systems and operations management as having the highest hit count. I appreciate how the authors formulated P1, which detects subtle differences in the research focus across each discipline.
• My main question is whether the authors may have set up a self-fulfilling prophecy where they assume that SCM and OM are key fields for BCT, thus they pick a database that focuses primarily on these fields and thus findings (research focus) continue to reinforce that these fields are key areas of research.
• The authors also pick a search strong (p9) that reinforces this.
• I am not saying that it is wrong, but it can be a limiting assumption if the authors failed to engage with this issue. In doing so the authors seem to have missed out research from other disciplines (and they do acknowledge that there are related disciplines) that could point to new areas of research.
• For example, Fig 4 shows mainly technical, operations related journals which do not foreground human and organisational factors, and Table 4 focuses on technology (platforms, interfaces, network configuration). These seem to reinforce a primarily technicist view of blockchain. Yet there are other topics that are distinctly non-technical about BCT, and which need to be explored. The issue of BCT and trust, for example, is a distinctly human issue. Page 2 lists barriers like lack of awareness and lack of management support which are very human/ social in nature.
• So all of this leads to the question What attempts were made to ensure that a “comprehensive” search was done of related disciplines? More practically, to what extent were resources from other disciplines systematically considered (for example what about journals in management, organisations, human factors in relation to technology adoption)? If so, please work these into the discussion.
• If related disciplines outside SCM and OM were not part of the analysis, why not? Why for example was your search strong limited to supply chain, logistic, operation, produc? Why not expand it to include things like human behaviour, social aspects of BCT, etc? I don’t think it is adequate to argue that the authors wish to make a contribution to SCM and OM – the fact that most research is there now does not mean that the research should stay there. In addition, the authors acknowledge multidisciplinarity as important
• In its current form, the paper seems to have overlooked these; important potential research strands seem to have been overlooked as well and the research pathways remain largely self-reinforcing and will continue along the same trajectories. This limits the authors aim to “capture the entire domain of BCT.”
• This is my main concern about exclusions in the paper. A few other concerns are more minor: can you explain more fully why the 347 articles were excluded (what makes a topic “not relevant”; can you give examples of what your exclusion criteria were as well as examples of articles that were included as well as excluded)
• The fact that three people did the conceptual framework does not ensure reliability/ validity. Can you explain this more fully? Can you explain how you cross-checked one another? What were some researcher attributes that helped ensure rigour in this area?
• The language is mostly precise and clear but there are some lapses in grammar. I don’t think a proofreader is needed but spelling and grammar checking tools might be helpful.
• Finally, can you manage the length of the paper? Table 1 might belong in an appendix. Another possibility is that references that were part of the content analysis may have to be listed separately (almost like a data set) as opposed to references that inform the rest of the paper. Some discussions might be presented in table form.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My major concern remains unanswered. I did not ask you do rewrite the paper, but I suggested adding a section that adds theory-based insight into the subject. What you presented in its current form is not significantly different from at least 4 of the papers presented in Table 2. Besides, you must include the papers published in late 2021 and early 2022.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

thank you for your revision. The paper is now in a good shape and I recommend it for publication.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

You have added some new insights. Please reformulate your research questions and/or add new ones that could be answered by the new contents included in your research. This way, you will better distinguish your work from the existing reviews.

I also have a few additional comments that could be addressed before accepting your review work:

1. Figure 1 should be redrawn using Visio or a more professional drawing platform.
2. Please consider a table of top-cited articles
3. Adding a table of the most-contributing universities will provide insights for blockchain researchers seeking research opportunities. You may use the Web of Science platform to extract such information in a matter of one hour or two.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf