Blockchain applications in management: A bibliometric analysis and literature review

Abstract

Blockchain has gained substantial recognition for its ability to induce transformation and innovation in existing business models and frameworks. Consequently, the application of this technology to the management domain and its processes has attracted increasing interest from academia and industry. Although research addressing the use of blockchain in management has gained momentum, this field presents a discontinuous overview of the current scope and boundary of the knowledge thereon. This study addresses this lacuna using bibliometric analyses to synthesize the prior literature. Data from Scopus 586 articles, entailing contributions from 72 countries, 273 journals, 1016 organizations, and 1284 authors, were analyzed. The findings indicate a maturing research focus on blockchain applications in specific managerial sectors, such as finance and supply chain management. However, this field's conceptual evolution is posited to be in its infancy in other sectors, such as for managing luxury goods and counterfeit products. Further, the thematic classification of the extant literature led to the identification of the following four major themes of research: strategy and regulation, enablement and implication, multi-domain deployment, and the inefficiencies of bitcoin. These findings are used to propose directions for further research in this field, such as the need for methodological advancement and theoretical grounding.