Roles of Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Capability and Flexibility

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is an outstanding work. I dont have much to comment but I have few advices to improve the work before publication:

1. Please provide suitable reference form for multiple references.

2. Please provide the reference if you have collected sufficient numbers of responses in interview and questionaire stage.

3. It is adviced to provide 77 questions in the questionaire as appendix

4. What is the critieria to ermove 35 items

5. It adviced if you can provide the methodolgy in categorising 24 items into four dimension 

6. It is advice to provide a flow chart an the beginning of Section 4. 

 

Author Response

It is an outstanding work. I don’t have much to comment but I have few advices to improve the work before publication:

1. Please provide suitable reference form for multiple references.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We may do it after the research paper is finally accepted. After that, we will format a suitable reference form for the journal publication. We have done this practice in the previous publication.

2. Please provide the reference if you have collected sufficient numbers of responses in interview and questionnaire stage.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. 100 response have been collected (i.e. refer to Section 5.1.1). The most commonly used way of non-response bias analysis is an independent t-test to compare early and late respondents. This is basically a comparison between the mean value of the two groups (Radhakrishna & Doamekpor, 2008). In this study, a t-test was conducted to examine any difference in all scale items between the two groups. For all the constructs the p-value is below .05. This shows no significant difference between the two groups, and it can be concluded that the difference is below the level of 5% for all constructs. This elaboration has been provided in Section 4.3.4, the last paragraph.

Radhakrishna, R. & Doamekpor, P., 2008. Strategies For Generalizing Findings in Survey Research. Journal Of Extension, 46(2), 1-4.

3. It is advised to provide 77 questions in the questionnaire as appendix

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. This study only focuses on the remaining key 42 questions. The remaining is not significant and thus, we do not need to show all 77 questions. The survey statement has already been provided in the manuscript.

4. What is the criteria to remove 35 items?

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. To check the inconsistent items and remove them for analysis step, the Item-total correlation test has been used. This allows them to find the items in the group that are not measuring the same construct. Any item with its item-total correlation coefficient below .2 must be deleted. To analyse the useable data collected from the respondent of this study, Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21 is used.

The reliability test has been conducted to confirm the number of responses is sufficient for analysis.

In this study, Cronbach’s alpha has been used to evaluate the reliability of the technique used for conducting surveys. The coefficient varies between 0 to 1, and a value of 0.6 or less generally indicates unsatisfactory internal consistency reliability. Typically, values over 0.70 are considered to be adequate, but a lot of researchers consider 0.60 as a practical cut-off criterion (Chen & Paulraj, 2004). Items are removed if Cronbach’s Alpha is below 0.70.

Chen, I. J. & Paulraj, A., 2004. Towards A Theory of Supply Chain Management: The Constructs and Measurements. Journal of Operations Management, 22(2), 119-150.

 

The elaboration has been provided in Section 4.3.6.

5. It advised that you can provide the methodology in categorizing 24 items into four dimension

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. Wu et al. (2006) developed a new conceptualization of supply chain capabilities consisting of four dimensions: Information exchange, coordination, activity integration, and responsiveness. These four dimensions represent all the important activities involved in the supply chain process. Each one of the dimension reflects the firm’s ability to perform cross-functional, and inter-organizational activities which are essential for the proper management of supply chains (Wu, et al., 2006).

 

Wu, F., Yeniyurt, S., Kim, D. & Cavusgil, T. S., 2006. The Impact of Information Technology on Supply Chain Capabilities and Firm Performance: A Resource-Based View. Industrial Marketing Management, 35(4), 493-504.

 

We have elaborated on the points in Section 5.3.

6. It is advice to provide a flow chart at the beginning of Section 4

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have provided a flow chart in Figure 2.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper focuses on the impact of blockchain technology on supply chain capability and flexibility, and measures the impact through a questionnaire. These results have important implications for promoting the use of blockchain technology in supply chain and guiding companies on how to use relevant technologies to improve supply chain capabilities and flexibility. In general, the idea of this paper is very good, and the problem is also very meaningful. However, I have some doubts that the authors can further think about and solve in order to improve the paper.

 

1.         In the introduction, you should explain the relationship between blockchain and the supply chain, and then identify the problems you need to solve. Otherwise, readers don't understand how you can combine blockchain technology and supply chain, and what problems you want to solve in the supply chain with blockchain technology.

 

2.         In the introduction, it seems that there should be some description of the innovation and contribution of the paper to the field of research. As far as we know, there has been a large amount of literature to demonstrate the usefulness of blockchain technology for supply chain, including flexibility, response and other capabilities. However, the contribution of this study needs to be further highlighted.

 

3.         In your hypothesis, how does blockchain affect supply chain capabilities and flexibility? There seems to be a large amount of literature that provides evidence, and you should look for more evidence before making your hypothesis. More importantly, it also helps readers understand your paper more easily.

 

4.         In 4.3 Questionnaire Survey, are the questionnaires you use widely accepted? In what studies have they been used? If you developed them yourself, how do you guarantee their usefulness?

 

5.         In 4.3 Questionnaire Survey, are some statistical methods considered to further report the reasonableness of the response rate and sample size? For the final sample, can an analysis of non-response bias be provided to check the validity of sample data? This will help enhance the credibility of the paper.

 

6.         In 5.1.1 Response Rate & Data Cleaning, you mentioned 'The removed responses accumulate to 26.38% of the total sent-out invitations'. However, this seems to be the percentage between the final samples and the total number of invitation. Is this a mistake? Please confirm again.

 

7.         In 5.2 -- 5.7, you provide the reliability test results of the questionnaire. However, how to show their validity?

 

8.         In the 5.9 regression analysis, although the results are significant, I am worried whether there will be some problems. In terms of the correlation between the factors, the factors you choose may cause severe auto-correlation, making the model results inaccurate. Please determine whether some problems exist in the model and correct them.

 

9.         Although you state in the limitations of the study that control variables are not included, I think control variables are very necessary. Because results without control variables are likely to be biased, we need more accurate results.

 

10.     In 6.1 Summary, you should highlight your contribution by comparing differences with other studies. Also, you should explain the results as to why they appear and how blockchain technology can be used to improve the supply chain capabilities and flexibility.

 

11.     I think you should cite some recently published papers on the relationship between information technologies and supply chain, and in particular how blockchain can impact the supply chain capabilities? Some papers recommended to refer are listed as follows.

 

(1)      Liu W, Liu X, Shi X, Hou J, Shi V, Dong J (2022). Collaborative adoption of blockchain technology: A supply chain contract perspective. Frontiers of Engineering Management, 1-22

(2)      Kim J S, Shin N (2019). The impact of blockchain technology application on supply chain partnership and performance. Sustainability, 11(21): 6181

(3)      Choi T M (2020). Supply chain financing using blockchain: Impacts on supply chains selling fashionable products. Annals of Operations Research, 25(4). 1-23

(4)      Ning Y, Li L, Xu S, X, Yang S (2022). How do digital technologies improve supply chain resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms. Frontiers of Engineering Management, 1-12

(5)      Ivanov D, Dolgui A, Sokolov B (2019). The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics. International Journal of Production Research, 57(3): 829-846

 

 

   

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

This paper focuses on the impact of blockchain technology on supply chain capability and flexibility, and measures the impact through a questionnaire. These results have important implications for promoting the use of blockchain technology in supply chain and guiding companies on how to use relevant technologies to improve supply chain capabilities and flexibility. In general, the idea of this paper is very good, and the problem is also very meaningful. However, I have some doubts that the authors can further think about and solve in order to improve the paper.

1. In the introduction, you should explain the relationship between blockchain and the supply chain, and then identify the problems you need to solve. Otherwise, readers don't understand how you can combine blockchain technology and supply chain, and what problems you want to solve in the supply chain with blockchain technology.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have identified the relationship between blockchain and the supply chain, as well as how blockchain can impact the supply chain capabilities are provided in Section 2.1. Also, the hypothesis diagram is provided in Figure 1.

2. In the introduction, it seems that there should be some description of the innovation and contribution of the paper to the field of research. As far as we know, there has been a large amount of literature to demonstrate the usefulness of blockchain technology for supply chain, including flexibility, response and other capabilities. However, the contribution of this study needs to be further highlighted.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have highlighted the research gap in Section 1.3.

3. In your hypothesis, how does blockchain affect supply chain capabilities and flexibility? There seems to be a large amount of literature that provides evidence, and you should look for more evidence before making your hypothesis. More importantly, it also helps readers understand your paper more easily.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. To understand the effect of Blockchain on the supply chain, this research focuses on two crucial aspects of supply chain management. First is supply chain capabilities, which included four dimensions: Information Exchange, Coordination, Activity Integration, and Responsiveness. Flexibility is the second aspect involved in this research for studying the influence of Blockchain technology on the supply chain. Furthermore, the Resource-based view theory allows us to understand how a resource can become a source of competitive advantage for the firm. The resource-based view theory is used to derive a conclusion on whether a firm can achieve some competitive advantage in the market against its rivals by implementing Blockchain technology in its information system. We have provided the explanation in Section 3.

4. In 4.3 Questionnaire Survey, are the questionnaires you use widely accepted? In what studies have they been used? If you developed them yourself, how do you guarantee their usefulness?

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments.

The theoretical framework mentioned is the basis for the development of the questionnaire used in this research study.

The questionnaire contains four sections. The first section is related to demographic information about the country, position, and industry. These three questions were compulsory for the respondent to fill in. This section also had questions concerning name, e-mail ID, and company name, but was not compulsory and the respondent could choose not the answer them.

The second section contains questions on Blockchain characteristics, which were extracted from the interview process. The third section is divided into the following subsections: information exchange, coordination, activity integration, and responsiveness. The last section is concerned with flexibility in supply chain management.

We have provided the explanation in Section 4.3.1, the first paragraph.

5. In 4.3 Questionnaire Survey, are some statistical methods considered to further report the reasonableness of the response rate and sample size? For the final sample, can an analysis of non-response bias be provided to check the validity of sample data? This will help enhance the credibility of the paper.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. Independent t-tests have been carried out, as it the most commonly used way of non-response bias analysis to compare respondents. This is basically a comparison between the mean value of the two groups (Radhakrishna & Doamekpor, 2008). In this study, t-test was conducted to examine any difference in all scale items between the two groups. For all the constructs the p-value below 0.05. This shows no significant difference between the two groups, and it can be concluded that the difference is below the level of 5% for all constructs.

Radhakrishna, R. & Doamekpor, P., 2008. Strategies For Generalizing Findings in Survey Research. Journal Of Extension, 46(2), 1-4.

We have provided the explanation in Section 4.3.4, the last paragraph.

6. In 5.1.1 Response Rate & Data Cleaning, you mentioned ‘The removed responses accumulate to 26.38% of the total sent-out invitations’. However, this seems to be the percentage between the final samples and the total number of invitations. Is this a mistake? Please confirm again.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. The data collection via surveys resulted in 112 responses out of 379 sent-out invitations, with a response rate of 29.55%. The data collected was cleaned and tested for reliability. The right measure has been selected and a number of steps have been taken to select the accurate data for conducting analysis. Three common problems in a research survey are missing values, straight-lining responses, and multiple choices.

We have mentioned this point in Section 5.1.1.

7. In 5.2 -- 5.7, you provide the reliability test results of the questionnaire. However, how to show their validity?

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. The reliability test is employed to determine which measurement indicators should be included or eliminated. The acceptable criterion is that Cronbach’s Alpha is higher than 0.70. Cronbach’s alpha is the average of all the possible split-half coefficients resulting from different ways of splitting the scale items. For instance, Cronbach’s Alpha is .771, which is above the acceptable level of 0.7.

We have addressed these points in Section 5.2.

8. In the 5.9 regression analysis, although the results are significant, I am worried whether there will be some problems. In terms of the correlation between the factors, the factors you choose may cause severe auto-correlation, making the model results inaccurate. Please determine whether some problems exist in the model and correct them.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. As the model is not using panel data, auto-correlation should not be an issue. To check the inconsistent items and remove them for analysis, ITCT (Item-Total Correlation Test) has been conducted. This allows them to find the items in the group that are not measuring the same construct. Any item with its item-total correlation coefficient below 0.2 is deleted. To analyze the useable data collected from the respondent of this study, Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21 is used.

The elaboration has been provided in Section 4.3.6.

9. Although you state in the limitations of the study that control variables are not included, I think control variables are very necessary. Because results without control variables are likely to be biased, we need more accurate results.

Response: Sorry for not explaining clearly. This study does include control variables in Section A of the questionnaire. But this study did not include some other control variables, like organizational size, employee number, etc.

10. In 6.1 Summary, you should highlight your contribution by comparing differences with other studies. Also, you should explain the results as to why they appear and how blockchain technology can be used to improve the supply chain capabilities and flexibility.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have highlighted the research gap in Section 1.3 to show the contribution of our study. To explain the results of why and how blockchain technology can be used to improve supply chain capabilities and flexibility are provided in Section 6.1, paragraph 3.

11. I think you should cite some recently published papers on the relationship between information technologies and supply chain, and in particular how blockchain can impact the supply chain capabilities? Some papers recommended to refer are listed as follows.

(1)      Liu W, Liu X, Shi X, Hou J, Shi V, Dong J (2022). Collaborative adoption of blockchain technology: A supply chain contract perspective. Frontiers of Engineering Management, 1-22

(2)      Kim J S, Shin N (2019). The impact of blockchain technology application on supply chain partnership and performance. Sustainability, 11(21): 6181

(3)      Choi T M (2020). Supply chain financing using blockchain: Impacts on supply chains selling fashionable products. Annals of Operations Research, 25(4). 1-23

(4)      Ning Y, Li L, Xu S, X, Yang S (2022). How do digital technologies improve supply chain resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms. Frontiers of Engineering Management, 1-12

(5)      Ivanov D, Dolgui A, Sokolov B (2019). The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics. International Journal of Production Research, 57(3): 829-846

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have illustrated these research papers in the revised manuscript. The relationship between information technologies and the supply chain, as well as how blockchain can impact the supply chain capabilities are provided in Section 2.1.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Your manuscript bring an interesting contribution to the field, especially related to the Blockchain in Supply Chains. However, I think it requires major improvements in the following aspects:

1) Introduction: Introduction section needs a better articulation, especially with regard the research gap position. It is not clear how does your research is positioned amongst the related studies in the field and how it does bring a novel contribution by covering the gap/gaps not covered in these other studies. 

2) Literature review: although you have included many references into your document, I feel that the relevant ones, specifically linked to blockchain technology in supply chain, are missing in the article. Also, some articulation with the references linked to Supply Chain 4.0/Digital Supply Chains is required. You should be able to consult the databases again and include the relevant publications in these fields (Blockchain in supply chains, Supply Chain 4.0 and Digital Supply Chains).

3) Methodology: It would be required you present your conceptual research framework (through a Figure) by clearly presenting the relation between the hypotheses. 

4) Conclusions/Discussions: In section 6, you stated "four main research questions were created". Indeed, these four main RQs were presented in the Introduction section. However, there is no discussion regarding the answers for these RQs based on the research findings. It is not common RQs for explanatory studies, as is yours, in which the aim is to make a confirmatory analysis over some hypotheses. However, you could consider RQs, if these have relation with Hypotheses. Some dicussion, by providing a clearly articulation between RQs and Hypotheses, and how the confirmatory analysis answers the RQs,  is highy required for the paper.

5) Lastly, I noticed that this paper has been submitted for a SI about Maritime Logistics and Port Management in the Post-Covid 19 context. However, I did not realize any contextualization, implication in terms of these specific processes of the whole supply chain. Although you are approaching supply chain as a whole, I think this articulation is highly required for your paper to be more aligned with the SI scope. Perhaps, you may include this in the Introduction, Results Dicussion and Implications. For instance, one question to be reflected: How would Blockchain flexibility and capability in supply chain impact/influence on Maritime Logistics and Port Management?

 

Hope my comments help you on further improvements of your paper,

 

Regards

Author Response

Your manuscript bring an interesting contribution to the field, especially related to the Blockchain in Supply Chains. However, I think it requires major improvements in the following aspects:

• Introduction: Introduction section needs a better articulation, especially with regard the research gap position. It is not clear how does your research is positioned amongst the related studies in the field and how it does bring a novel contribution by covering the gap/gaps not covered in these other studies.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have highlighted the research gap and contribution in Section 1.3.

• Literature review: although you have included many references into your document, I feel that the relevant ones, specifically linked to blockchain technology in supply chain, are missing in the article. Also, some articulation with the references linked to Supply Chain 4.0/Digital Supply Chains is required. You should be able to consult the databases again and include the relevant publications in these fields (Blockchain in supply chains, Supply Chain 4.0 and Digital Supply Chains).

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have illustrated these research papers in the revised manuscript. The relationship between blockchain technology and the supply chain, as well as the study related to supply chain 4.0 or digital supply chain, are provided in Section 2.1.

• Methodology: It would be required you present your conceptual research framework (through a Figure) by clearly presenting the relation between the hypotheses.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. Figure 3 was provided in the revised manuscript.

• Conclusions/Discussions: In section 6, you stated “four main research questions were created”. Indeed, these four main RQs were presented in the Introduction section. However, there is no discussion regarding the answers for these RQs based on the research findings. It is not common RQs for explanatory studies, as is yours, in which the aim is to make a confirmatory analysis over some hypotheses. However, you could consider RQs, if these have relation with Hypotheses. Some discussion, by providing a clearly articulation between RQs and Hypotheses, and how the confirmatory analysis answers the RQs, is highly required for the paper.

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. Revised “four main research questions were stated” and Figure 3 was provided in the revised manuscript.

5) Lastly, I noticed that this paper has been submitted for a SI about Maritime Logistics and Port Management in the Post-Covid 19 context. However, I did not realize any contextualization, implication in terms of these specific processes of the whole supply chain. Although you are approaching supply chain as a whole, I think this articulation is highly required for your paper to be more aligned with the SI scope. Perhaps, you may include this in the Introduction, Results Discussion and Implications. For instance, one question to be reflected: How would Blockchain flexibility and capability in supply chain impact/influence on Maritime Logistics and Port Management?

Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have reflected on what way blockchain flexibility and capability in the supply chain impact maritime logistics and port management in Section 6.2, last paragraph.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

 

I realized you have followed my comments in this revised version. 

 

Regards