Enhancing Supply Chains with Distributed Ledger Technology: Expert Insights and Design Recommendations

As supply chains (SCs) face increasing pressure from ecological demands, ethical expectations, and global disruptions, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is gaining attention as a potential enabler of transparent, secure, and automated processes, helping to meet the expectations of customers and regulatory authorities. Nevertheless, the lack of generally valid design recommendations hinders its implementation. Therefore, we adopted grounded theory principles within a design science research approach to address this gap. Subsequently, we derived 11 overarching expert insights for developing a DLT operating model in SCs and 15 for its implementation by conducting 16 expert interviews. These insights were finally used to extract 19 generally valid design recommendations for applying DLT in SC processes that contribute to practical implementations and the framing of realistic adoption expectations by guiding researchers and practitioners.