The effect of blockchain implementation on supply chain disputes

Although the significance of blockchain implementation has been broadly recognized, it is uncertain how a firm's blockchain implementation may further influence its supply chain relationships. This study fills the gap by exploring the relationship between blockchain implementation and supply chain disputes. Specifically, this study proposes that buyers with blockchain implementation are more likely to foment disputes with their suppliers, based on a substitution interaction between governance mechanisms. It also investigates how this impact may be moderated by corporate ethics and resource availability factors. A unique panel dataset of listed Chinese firms from multiple resources is created to test the hypotheses. The results suggest that a buyer's blockchain implementation is positively associated with supply chain disputes. Moreover, this positive relationship is weaker when buyers exhibit a higher level of technology for social good (TSG) orientation and engage in fewer financial misconducts. Conversely, the positive relationship is stronger when buyers operate in environments with higher supplier concentration and receive lower analyst recommendations. Our study makes both methodological and theoretical contributions. Specifically, we employ GPT-4 to help identify supply chain disputes with the buyer's violation. We also use a machine learning approach through combining the “continuous bag of words” (CBOW) method with the BERT NLP model to extract TSG orientation from unstructured annual reports, enabling both efficient and comprehensive understanding of semantic information. Our findings provide valuable insights for buyers, suppliers and policy makers in developing strategies to mitigate the adverse effect of blockchain implementation on supply chain relationships.