Blockchain technology as an enabler for sustainable business ecosystems: A comprehensive roadmap for socioenvironmental and economic sustainability

Blockchain technology is a core technology expected to play a highly instrumental role in competing with socioenvironmental challenges. The literature hypothesizes various blockchain functions for building a sustainable business ecosystem. This study unifies these diverse perspectives into an interpretive strategy roadmap that provides a holistic overview of how blockchain should be leveraged to deliver sustainability functions optimally. The study first identified the sustainability functions of blockchain through a content-centric literature review. The study applied interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and drew on experts' opinions to model how and in which order blockchain delivers these sustainability functions. The study further drew on the ISM output and interpretive logic-knowledge base to develop the promised roadmap. Results revealed that blockchain promotes a decentralized decision system that facilitates automation and real-time information sharing (RIS) across supply chains. Blockchain introduces traceability and transparency into supply chain operations. These conditions offer monitoring of business operations and the development of trust across value-chain stakeholders. These driver functions lead to value chain optimization and circularity integration into business and supply chain operations. When these necessary functional conditions are met, businesses can further draw on blockchain to promote economic and environmental aspects of sustainability through more complex functions enabling resource efficiency, cost reduction, pollution prevention, and higher profit margins. The order in which businesses can leverage these functions would define blockchain sustainability performance. Each function is uniquely valuable to sustainability, and none of them can be overlooked.