Proposal of a decision-making model for digital technology adoption: A blockchain case study

Blockchain Technology promises significant benefits in the scope of the supply chain and attracts the attention of both scholars and practitioners. In this direction, academic research on revealing the disruptive potential of Blockchain in supply chains' functional and structural dynamics is understandably increasing. However, despite the immense potential of technology and the academic and practical effort to accelerate its diffusion in supply chains, not much progress has been made in its industrial applications. Hence, the main shortcoming in the extant research is that the proposed adoption models are mostly conceptual, with low applicability. Notably, extant literature does not adequately address whether a firm should adopt Blockchain Technology, and therefore, in this study, the net value of adoption is introduced to fill this gap in the literature. The theoretical grounds of the proposed adoption decision framework lie in the technology-organization-environment framework and force field theory, while it represents a single numerical metric that uncovers "the net value" of Blockchain adoption for a particular enterprise. The suggested framework is further supported by dynamic capabilities and relational view theories. The proposed metric, the net value of adoption, is the computational difference between the expected benefits from the summation of the expected risks and adoption barriers. The research employs a two-step modified Delphi and DEMATEL-based Analytical Network Process (DANP) methodology.