Towards Inter-Organizational Business Process Governance through Blockchain

M. E. M. van Wingerde
2019 International Conference on Business Process Management  
Blockchain may be the catalyst needed to truly realize inter-organizational business processes. A blockchain makes use of a distributed ledger on which data is canonically grouped into blocks, of which the integrity and validity is agreed upon by a decentralized consensus mechanism. Through smart contracts persistent scripts which are executed on a distributed virtual machineinterorganizational business processes can be executed and monitored without the need to trust a third party. This new
more » ... adigm introduces a wide array of governance challenges, both for internal and external stakeholders of a blockchain platform. If blockchain technology is ever to be widely introduced into the daily lives of people and businesses, it is crucial for it to be adopted by our existing institutions or spark the creation of entirely new institutions [1], and robust governance of its usage is of paramount importance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that organizational networks face difficulties in implementing blockchain applications due to a lack of governance structure. Moreover, the current literature does not provide guidelines for the management or governance of inter-organizational business processes, let alone if they are based on blockchain. The researcher has identified this as a research gap, therefore conducting this study to formalize and advance the concept of inter-organizational governance in business networks based on blockchain technology.
dblp:conf/bpm/Wingerde19 fatcat:xupqs6lvazgaflmwvan534pmiu