Enhancing the reliability of inter-firms’ relationships information: the tracking and tracing role of blockchain
Progetto Circular economy (CE) is widely recognised as a strategic approach for tackling current sustainability challenges. It is commonly identified by practitioners as a way to overcome the limitations of linear production and consumption models for increasing resource use efficiency. The scientific debate focus on several issues ranging from supply chain management to emissions and waste treatments. In this context, it is worth to consider which drivers could support industry in implementing circularity principles. Recent contributions suggest anumber of potential applications of enabling technologies for improving CE principles under the Industry 4.0 framework, enabling real-time visualisation and actuation capabilities, automated operations-level decision-making capability, and many such new capabilities over the Industry 3.0 framework. However, the proliferation of data generated by all those expected capabilities require new digital solutions to define how that data should be captured, stored and managed for improving CE accountability and analysis. This scenario involves a high number of actors, making such effort even more challenging insofar requiring a shift from organisational level to inter-organisation level. One of the most interesting technologies that seem to overcome such challenge is the blockchain (BC), consisting in a shared ledger in which blocks of transactions are authenticated and permanently recorded. Recent literature reviews report agrowing interest in the scientific community which considers the BC as a disruptive innovation, including several benefits and challenges for business and society. This research project aims at investigating how blockchain could foster industry information transparency in the implementation of CE principles. Specifically, our focus is on the inter-firms’ relationships: since the BC tracks all transactions happening in typically complex supply chains, an interesting issue is to investigate its role in enhancing transparency related to transactions performed by multiple entities, like suppliers, producers, vendors, distributors, etc. A transparent and traceable product lifecycle can further close product lifecycle loops, decrease waste generation, decrease emissions, and engage governments, stakeholders, and users.