Determinants of Blockchain Technology Introduction in Organizations: an Empirical Study among Experienced Practitioners

Abstract

Blockchain is expected to enable new types of interorganizational relationships, new approaches to governance and new approaches to settlement and clearing processes. Neverthless, although the interest on blockchain is on the rise, there are not many blockchain implementations in organizations and there is limited empirical research investigating the reasons for this. This paper contributes to filling this gap by investigating the following research question: what are the impeding and motivating factors for organizational blockchain adoption? Data were collected through a survey based on pairwise comparisons of key factors identified in the literature. The data collected were analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is a structured approach for deriving priorities among diverse elements. The results provide insights about the issues that matter the most for practitioners and show that infrastructural qualities (reliability, transparency, immutability) matter more than characteristics related to blockchain´s transformative potential (automation of transactions, decentralization). Furthermore, the results for impeding factors indicate that the most prominent concerns relate to maturity and scalability.