Untangling operational performance implication of ambidextrous blockchain initiatives: an empirical investigation of Chinese manufacturers
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2022-0298 |
| Published date | 12 December 2022 |
| Date | 12 December 2022 |
| Pages | 556-577 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
| Author | Ying Kei Tse,Shiyun Wang,Xiaohong Liu,Chun Ho Wu |
Untangling operational
performance implication
of ambidextrous blockchain
initiatives: an empirical
investigation of
Chinese manufacturers
Ying Kei Tse
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Shiyun Wang and Xiaohong Liu
Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China, and
Chun Ho Wu
Department of Supply Chain and Information Management,
The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Shatin New Territories, Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose –Blockchain has been considered as a disruptive technology and every industry stands to
benefit from it. According to Deloitte, increasing number of managers claim that their firms will suffer loss
in competitive advantage if they do not adopt blockchain. Despite this motivation, insufficient knowledge
on how can blockchain add value inhibits the commitment to its adoption. To better understand the
possible influence of blockchain, two dimensions (exploitation and exploration) of blockchain initiatives
are distinguished. This research aims to examine the impact of ambidextrous blockchain initiatives on
firms’operational efficiency, as well as the moderating role of unabsorbed slack and environmental
munificence.
Design/methodology/approach –In this paper, secondary panel data were collected from multiple sources
to test the proposed hypotheses. Content analysis was adopted to operationalise ambidextrous blockchain
initiatives from firms’official announcements.
Findings –The authors find that firms’ambidexterity in blockchain initiatives have significantly positive
impact on operational efficiency. Furthermore, when firms have lower unabsorbed slack or in more munificent
environments, they may benefit from managing a balance between exploration and exploitation.
Originality/value –This research offers some insightful theoretical and managerial implications of
ambidextrous blockchain initiatives. The findings of this study contribute to blockchain literature by
providing theory-driven empirical research.
Keywords Blockchain, Organizational ambidexterity, Operational efficiency, Unabsorbed slack,
Environmental munificence
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Blockchain –defined as ‘a decentralised, distributed, shared and immutable database ledger
that stores registry of assets and transactions across a peer-to-peer network’(Khan and
Salah, 2018, p.405)–is listed as one of the top 10 strategic technology trends, with the
potential to provide significant business opportunity (Cearley and Burke, 2018).
Manufacturing and operations management, in particular, are perceived as the most
IMDS
123,2
556
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (72071221).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0263-5577.htm
Received 12 May 2022
Revised 20 September 2022
Accepted 26 October 2022
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 123 No. 2, 2023
pp. 556-577
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-05-2022-0298
promising domains for adopting blockchain (Lohmer and Lasch, 2020). According to a report
published by PwC (2019), blockchain is potential to revolutionise manufacturing in designing,
engineering, making and scaling products. Realising such potentials, manufacturing firms
are also being out front in developing blockchain (PwC, 2019). Growing interest has been
shown in using blockchain to address operational challenges (Jabbar and Dani, 2020).
Blockchain is anticipated to address the long-standing pain points in manufacturing industry
such as materials provenance, counterfeit detection, engineering design for complex products
and so on. For example, for aircraft manufacturers, blockchain can continuously update the
condition of each part, which lead to shortened time on routine inspection and aircraft
maintenance (PwC, 2019). More generally, blockchain is expected to benefit operations in
many ways, including reducing costs, enhancing productivity and alleviating paper-trail
inefficiencies.
Despite blockchain research continuously grow, the extant literature remains largely
technical or conceptual, and has mostly been composed of theoretical expositions, framework
proposals and case studies and shows a relative lack of quantitative empirical studies
(Karakas et al., 2021;Queiroz et al., 2019). Since the application of blockchain is still at a rapid
growth period, blockchain’s capacity to help firms with value creation needs to be examined
more closely. And according to Renee Ure, Lenovo’s chief operating officer, operational
efficiencies can be seen through the use of blockchain.
In the light of this, this study aims to investigate the impact of blockchain initiatives,
which refers to firms’use of blockchain, on firms’operational efficiency. Operational
efficiency refers to a firm’s managerial competence to transform diverse inputs into value-
added outputs in the process of production, which is crucial to firms’success and must be
taken seriously (Li et al., 2010). Hasan et al. (2020) pioneered in addressing this issue by
directly investigating the association between the adoption of blockchain and operational
efficiency. However, due to the fact that blockchain is one of the primary information
technology innovations (Clohessy and Acton, 2019), blockchain initiatives can manifest
themselves as varied innovation activities, such as incremental innovation in daily operations
and business processes, or more radical in product and service. As suggeste d by
ambidexterity theory, different patterns of innovation, i.e. exploitation and exploration,
should be considered. On the one hand, firms can adopt existing blockchain services or
products to ‘enhance, optimise, secure and streamline many existing business and industrial
processes’(Al-Jaroodi and Mohamed, 2019, p. 36500), which represents an exploitative
orientation. On the other hand, they can also develop their own blockchain-based R&D
projects to create new business opportunities, processes and product development (Benzidia
et al., 2021), which represents an exploratory orientation. However, there is still a lack of
understanding on the business value associated with different patterns of blockchain
initiatives. As noted by Queiroz and Wamba (2019), the inadequate understanding of
blockchain’s value will be the important barrier for firms to adopt blockchain. In addition,
technology exploration and exploitation could cross-fertilise each other (Geerts et al., 2018).
The separation investigation of the two activities could jeopardise the understanding of
blockchain’s effect. To address this concern, this research takes a further step by
distinguishing blockchain initiatives into two categories: exploitative and exploratory, and
employs organisational ambidexterity theory as the research lens.
Following organisational ambidexterity theory, we focus on the influence of ambidextrous
blockchain initiatives, which is a metaphor defined as a firm’s ability to successfully pursue
both exploitative blockchain initiatives (EtBI) and exploratory blockchain initiatives (ErBI).
We distinguish EtBI and ErBI by adapting the definitions of exploitation and exploration.
In the context of strategic alliances, exploitation refers to a situation wherein a firm can
achieve incremental improvements in its current products and processes by leveraging its
partners’existing specialised knowledge (Hoang and Rothaermel, 2010). Exploration, in
Ambidextrous
blockchain
initiatives
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