An Analysis on the Adoption of Blockchain Technology in Industry 5.0 Sustainable Supply

Introduction

Numerous businesses, including healthcare systems, smart-contract transactions, governance, emissions trading, and corporate information, have made extensive use of blockchain technology (BT) (Kouhizadeh et al., 2021). Apart from the aforementioned areas, our research focuses on the supply chain industry, where BT is becoming increasingly significant.

In the supply chain, several business units work together to find raw materials, transform them into completed goods, or transport goods to retailers. These business units involve suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers (Beamon, 1998). With supply chains becoming increasingly global, they are growing longer and more intricate (Breese et al., 2019). Sustainability is one of the problems that contemporary supply chains frequently encounter, and BT is seen to be critical to a business's capacity to achieve supply chain sustainability (Rejeb & Rejeb, 2020). Over the past 20 years, supply chain management (SCM) research has become more and more concerned with sustainability (Shevchenko & Pagell, 2014).

Seuring and Müller (2008) define SCM as the coordination of information and material flows and business-to-business cooperation along the supply chain with the goal of achieving the societal, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainable development (Rajeev et al., 2017).

The best way to integrate the sustainability concept into SCM has generated a lot of discussion in both academics and industry (Kersten & Saeed (2019). Scholars have urged for further research on several topics, such as how to use BT to assure sustainability, measure the system's resilience and traceability, and prevent supply chain interruptions. Furthermore, there has been a major shift in logistics across numerous businesses, especially considering the COVID-19 epidemic. Future logistics network development concepts were suggested by Nitsche and Straube, (2021). Globalisation, greater investment in transparency and related technology, and enhanced adaptability and durability across diverse logistics networks are some of these situations. One of the most intriguing new technologies that will aid in the realisation of this goal is thought to be BT. This research uses a hybrid methodology that integrates bibliometric and content analysis to examine the application of BT in sustainable supply chains to respond to these requests and recommendations.

Every transaction ever made is kept in an precise and verifiable record on the blockchain system. BC therefore can enhance data integrity, security, and transparency (Crosby & Associates, 2016). A few key ideas, involving as decentralisation, verifiability, and immutability, form its foundation. Security, chronological data, group maintenance, and programmability are discussed by Munir et al., (2022). Decentralisation is the term used to characterise a trust-based network framework that operates outside of any central authority. Verifiability means that each person uses their private-public keys to encrypt their data. Because of the consensus-based methodology of the BT Hackius & Petersen, (2017), each new block that is introduced to the chain maintains the hash value of the previous block, allowing for the addition of new blocks to the system with consensus. The technology provides security because of its strong encryption. Blockchain allows for the security of chronological data. The system links the various blocks in chronological sequence in addition to permanently storing the data. Since blockchain is a distributed database, communal decisions are mostly responsible for system maintenance. Lastly, blockchain allows for programmability because blocks could encode and store data.