Strategic Value of Blockchain Technology. (Tentative Title)
Mentor: Bert-Jan Butijn, Second Reader: Francesco Lelli
Blockchain technology (BCT), also referred to as distributed ledger technology, is currently regarded as one of the most important technological developments. The locus of this pervasive technology is the increasing attention towards deploying blockchain technology to carry out transactions during business processes. Transactions that are carried out during a business process can be executed in a more effective and secure fashion, using the beneficial properties of blockchain technology such as the transparency (tamperproof) and immutability of transaction records stored on the blockchain.
Because of these properties, BCT offers a way to execute processes in a trustworthy manner even in a network without any mutual trust between nodes. Furthermore, the parties involved in the transaction can rely on the blockchain technology to guarantee that transactions are carried out and transaction records can be regarded as trustworthy, there is no longer a need for a trusted third party to carry out these transactions.
The absence of a third party in a process reduces the transaction costs between parties because there is no brokerage fee that needs to be paid for handling the transaction. As such, BCT offers the potential of faster business process execution whilst greatly reducing compliance costs. Therefore the adoption of BCT for business processes could accumulate to a significant reduction of costs for firms. Yet, little is known about the full strategic potential of BCT.
For your master thesis we expect you to study this strategic potential. This means that you will be conducting interviews at various firms that are currently using BCT, or are in the phase of exploring its strategic potential. We expect that you have some prior experience with, and skills in conducting interviews. Besides these skills you speak and write fluent English.
This project does not involve an internship. Instead, it will try to have a high academic relevance and theoretical contribution and, based on the quality of your work the candidate may be able to publish the results in the proceedings and scientific journals.
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