Abstract
PurposeThis paper provides a structured literature review of blockchain in accounting. The authors identify current trends, analyse and critique the key topics of research and discuss the future of this nascent field of inquiry.Design/methodology/approachThis study’s analysis combined a structured literature review with citation analysis, topic modelling using a machine learning approach and a manual review of selected articles. The corpus comprised 153 academic papers from two ranked journal lists, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). From this, the authors analysed and critiqued the current and future research trends in the four most predominant topics of research in blockchain for accounting.FindingsBlockchain is not yet a mainstream accounting topic, and most of the current literature is normative. The four most commonly discussed areas of blockchain include the changing role of accountants; new challenges for auditors; opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology application; and the regulation of cryptoassets. While blockchain will likely be disruptive to accounting and auditing, there will still be a need for these roles. With the sheer volume of information that blockchain records, both professions may shift out of the back-office toward higher-profile advisory roles where accountants try to align competitive intelligence with business strategy, and auditors are called on ex ante to verify transactions and even whole ecosystems.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors identify several challenges that will need to be examined in future research. Challenges include skilling up for a new paradigm, the logistical issues associated with managing and monitoring multiple parties all contributing to various public and private blockchains, and the pressing need for legal frameworks to regulate cryptoassets.Practical implicationsThe possibilities that blockchain brings to information disclosure, fraud detection and overcoming the threat of shadow dealings in developing countries all contribute to the importance of further investigation into blockchain in accounting.Originality/valueThe authors’ structured literature review uniquely identifies critical research topics for developing future research directions related to blockchain in accounting.
Highlights
Blockchain is a technology for storing and verifying transactional records that works by adding “blocks” of data to a ledger, called the blockchain, that is maintained across a network of peer-to-peer computers (Coyne and McMickle, 2017)
Most of the articles that have been published are normative in approach and look at the future applications of blockchain in accounting
By combining machine-learning methods with more traditional approaches, we were able to draw a holistic picture of the critical advances and trends in the corpus of literature
Summary
Blockchain is a technology for storing and verifying transactional records that works by adding “blocks” of data to a ledger, called the blockchain, that is maintained across a network of peer-to-peer computers (Coyne and McMickle, 2017). It is a potentially disruptive technology that has begun to have dramatic impacts on the business models and market. © Tatiana Garanina, Mikko Ranta and John Dumay. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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