Breaking Fad: Unpacking the Orchestration of Blockchain Ecosystems
Authors: Deodhar, Swanand J.; Sahay, Arvind; Tiwari, Tara
Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (2026)
DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00984
<jats:p>Prior work has advocated blockchain as a promising tool for organizations across sectors. However, given the ecosystem nature of the technology, blockchain’s benefits may not be fully realized unless it encompasses stakeholders in the focal organization’s value chain. As a result, examining how organizations orchestrate blockchain ecosystems is crucial for organizational research on blockchain. Our study addresses this question by drawing on the existing literature on ecosystem orchestration. For primary data, we relied on in-depth interviews with senior decision makers from blockchain technology vendors who were directly involved in these use cases. We inductively analyzed these data and developed visual maps of eight distinct blockchain ecosystems, spanning as many sectors. Our findings can be categorized into two groups. First, our visual maps revealed four distinct archetypes (collation, representation, replacement, and extension) of the intended benefits of blockchain ecosystems. These benefits, we argue, captured the business logic for the stakeholders to engage in a blockchain ecosystem. Our analysis further revealed a hierarchy between these artifacts. Interestingl…