Rajiv Kohli ([email protected]) is John N. Dalton Memorial Professor of Business at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, William & Mary. Prior to joining academia, he was a Project Leader in Decision Support Services at Trinity Health. Dr. Kohli’s research has been published in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, MIS Quarterly Executive and Journal of Operations Management, among other journals. He is a coauthor of the book The IT Payoff: Measuring Business Value of Information Technology Investment, published by Financial Times Prentice-Hall. He serves as a Senior Editor for Information Systems Research.
Ting-Peng Liang ([email protected]) is Director of the Electronic Commerce Research Center of National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan, ROC. He received a Ph.D. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a Fellow, Leo Award Recipient, and Past President of the Association for Information Systems. Dr. Liang’s research interests include electronic commerce, data analytics, information systems strategy, and neural information systems. His papers have appeared in top journals such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the AIS, Management Science, Operations Research, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, among others.
IntroductionBlockchain is an emerging technology that enables two or more entities to conduct secure transactions. After a blockchain transaction is executed, it cannot be altered because the transaction information is encrypted. The transactions are safeguarded because they are sealed in a block, linked with other blocks in a chain, and then shared with nodes across the Internet. These properties of blockchain technology create strategic opportunities for businesses, for example, by lowering transaction costs by eliminating the middlemen who charge a fee to verify and guarantee the authenticity of transactions. Although there are several promising use cases, we are yet to see widespread adoption and assimilation of blockchain in business strategy.
A large number of papers associated with blockchain technology have been published in recent years. They cover a broad range of applications, ranging from global supply chain to cryptocurrency and intelligent manufacturing. Many organizations consider blockchain to be a revolutionary technology that can create sustainable value and even alter business models. In order to gain full advantage of this new technology, however, it is important that managers view blockchain as strategic and integrate it into existing strategic infrastructure and in the future strategic planning. They must perceive long-term value in adopting blockchain and inducting it in organizational strategy planning. From an Information Systems scholarship perspective, it is important for us to explore what changes in skills, processes, and organizational structure are needed to realize the strategic value from blockchain. The objective of this Special Section is to analyze and publicize the building blocks and use of blockchain through exemplars that show its strategic integration into organizations.
References
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