Governance design of blockchain consortia for efficient and transparent procurement and supply chain management

The digital transformation offers a variety of opportunities to increase efficiency in buyer‐supplier relationships as well as whole supply chains and networks. The novel blockchain technology can increase transparency for all partners involved, ensure product provenance, and enable efficient automation of purchasing and supply chain management processes using smart contracts. Blockchain essentially provides a trustless system as the technology itself verifies trust in the network with unalterable transaction records. Concurrently, a higher degree of decentralization can be achieved and a change in decision‐making structures is promoted. A major challenge in managing these new networks is the design and implementation of efficient governance structures. Potential configurations range from hierarchically controlled systems to decentralized autonomous organizations. Which approaches are currently used in real implementations and for what reason has hardly been investigated so far. We use an empirical, qualitative study to analyze blockchain technologyʹs influence on governance structures in industrial consortia and highlight critical steps for selecting a suitable governance configuration for future collaboration efforts.