Unboxing the network behind supply chain digitization: a pioneering study about the interplay between blockchain, accounting and management control

Starting from the requests of different authors in literature to investigate the issues of Big Data and blockchain applications in business management, this thesis aimed to investigate the case of the first blockchain application in Europe in an agro-food supply chain. In particular, given the lack of empirical evidence on the impact of these new technologies on business management and, more specifically, on their interaction with traditional accounting and control systems, this research work is among the pioneers on these issues by providing preliminary empirical results about the ways through which blockchain and accounting interplay and affect each other. Through the methodology of the single case study and by relying on Actor-Network Theory, the thesis offers important empirical evidence and managerial implications. In particular, the thesis shows how, contrary to the theoretical assumptions proposed in literature, they are the traditional accounting and control activities that support the blockchain rather than vice-versa. Accounting is the information base on which the technology is customized and, together with the management control activities, remedy some of its intrinsic defects, thus representing the engine of the blockchain itself. The blockchain, for its part, proves to be an accounting inscription that, by allowing the action at distance, extends the monitoring activities within the supply chain improving inter organizational controls. Finally, "unboxing" the whole path of adoption of the blockchain and the related network creation process, they are presented several managerial solutions that are useful for effective implementation of the blockchain and for the overcoming of the relative barriers to its adoption.