BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY AND SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE: A BIBLIOMETRIC AND VISUALIZATION ANALYSIS

Background: Recently, global supply chains have been heavily disrupted by severe events (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and recent natural disasters), prompting both practitioners and academics to find innovative responses to improve supply chain resilience in the face of unexpected disruptive turbulence. Blockchain technology (BCT) has emerged as one such response. As a result, the literature has witnessed a significant growth in studies focusing on supply chain resilience research from the BCT perspective. This paper presents a bibliometric and visualization analysis of research at the nexus of BCT and supply chain resilience.

Methods: To carry out our analysis, we adopted a structured methodology, starting with the determination of relevant keywords to build up our search string, moving on to the selection of a scientific database, and finally to the application of inclusion criteria to retain only relevant articles. The analysis was performed using VOSviewer software.

Results: As analysis results, we found that Sarkis Joseph, Kumar Anil, Helms Marilyn, Hervani Aref Aghaei, and Nandi Santosh are the most highly productive authors and that Sustainability is the principal journal with the most significant number of articles. Regarding country contributions, India, England, China, the USA, and Australia were found to be the top contributors. Finally, “BCT for secure supply chain management”, “BCT and sustainability”, “BCT, an Industry 4.0 technology, and supply chain resilience”, and “BCT within supply chains in the COVID-19 era” were identified as four main research clusters at the nexus of BCT and supply chain resilience.

Conclusions: The results of our bibliometric analysis indicate that research at the intersection of BCT and supply chain resilience has attracted considerable interest from the scientific community, particularly in recent years. The network analysis uncovers four relevant research streams that underline the potential of BCT to contribute to improving the resilience of supply chains worldwide. This study provides meaningful insights into supply chain resilience research from the perspective of BCT, constituting an essential milestone for future developments.