A data-driven, comparative review of the academic literature and news media on blockchain-enabled supply chain management: Trends, gaps, and research needs

The application of blockchain technology in supply chain management has become a popular area of discussion in research and practice. This paper develops a computational, data-driven synthesis of the scholarly literature versus news media on BT-enabled supply chain management (BT-SCM) to uncover major trends, understand how academic research is aligned with business practice, and find out existing gaps. Through text mining and topic modeling of 1148 full-text research papers and 5130 news articles, major themes within each domain, their patterns of evolution over time, and the depth and breadth of their associations were identified. Mapping ana-lyses were also conducted based on the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model and the main SCM research streams to further explore existing knowledge gaps. The findings revealed that BT-enabled supply chain asset management, BT-enabled reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chain, and actual versus anticipated performance outcomes of BT-SCM are among important pathways for future research. The findings also high-lighted where there is more need to enhance the practical relevance of BT-SCM research considering advances in business adoption. The paper provides a comprehensive, unbiased assessment of the BT-SCM knowledge land-scape and a taxonomy of the research questions related to the technical and managerial aspects of BT-SCM that are particularly useful for the community of researchers in the field. It offers a practical framework that can be applied to assess the academic literature on other emerging technologies in SCM where state-of-the-practice is key to guiding research efforts.