Blockchain-Enabled Cross-Border E-Commerce Supply Chain Management: A Bibliometric Systematic Review

Abstract

Driven by the internet-based advanced information technologies and logistics channel improvement, the cross-border e-commerce industry keeps an increasing trend in Chinese industrial market. Blockchain, as an empowered technology, contributes to the management innovations for industrial sectors. The blockchain technology, due to its transparency, visibility, and dis-intermediation characteristics, helps to improve operations management of cross-border e-commerce supply chain by innovative industrial applications. However, practical applications of the blockchain technique-enabled cross-border e-commerce sector are still in their infancy and still at the proof-of-concept stage. This paper presents a systematic review on blockchain-enabled cross-border e-commerce supply chain management by employing a bibliometric data-driven analysis. All relevant publications from the Web of Science database from 2013 to 2021 were collected as the research samples. Besides, the VosViewer is adopted to conduct the network and co-word study by visualizing collaborative relationships of sampled literatures. Results show that the blockchain technique has substantial applications in the field of cross-border e-commerce supply chain, whose contributions mainly focus on cross-border e-commerce platform, supply chain operations, and data governance and information management. Academic researchers and industrial managers can promote innovative management practices in cross-border e-commerce supply chain by adopting blockchain. Moreover, we hope this study serves as a future direction for both researchers and engineers on leveraging blockchain to improve the supply chain management performance of the cross-border e-commerce.