Blockchain for Businesses: A Scoping Review of Suitability Evaluations Frameworks

Abstract

Blockchain is an emerging technology that is increasingly being applied in both industrial and academic contexts. Cryptocurrency is a major application of blockchain in the financial sector, but the technology is expected to disrupt other industries. In fact, it has influenced many businesses and reshaped private and public sector activities. Therefore, there is growing interest in blockchain-based solutions, and applications have evolved in finance, insurance, logistics, government, education, and healthcare. Applications built on blockchains benefit from fair access, transparency, and immutability; these properties have attracted business owners and practitioners to explore blockchain opportunities beyond cryptocurrency, motivating them to investigate how they can benefit from the technology and also to evaluate its compatibility with their strategic orientation. Suitability evaluation (or applicability evaluation) has always been a crucial step for the successful adaptation of any innovative technology, including blockchain. Hence, this paper investigates how the current literature has addressed blockchain suitability evaluation for business cases beyond cryptocurrency. A scoping review is presented that examines the evaluation models and frameworks that have been developed to assist decision-makers regarding blockchain adoption. The results indicate that blockchain evaluation methodologies have utilized varied approaches and serve diverse objectives, which are applicable for different technology adoption stages. Through this scoping review, blockchain evaluation initiatives are classified into five categories, and a critical analysis is offered of the evaluation models under each category. As such, this scoping review overviews existing methodologies for blockchain evaluation approaches with a focus on context, identified assessments factors, assessment process, and evaluation dimensions.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• distributed ledger
• suitability evaluation
• applicability evaluation
• decision models
• multi criteria decision making (MCDM)