A Literature Review of Blockchain Research
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
Examiners: Associate Professor Tan Chuan Hoo and Assistant Professor Qiao Dandan
Abstract:
The disruptive nature of blockchain technology has given rise to the scholarly debate about its practicality and applicability across many academic and non-academic circles. While a significant portion of research has focused on the fundamental and architectural aspects, the embeddedness of blockchain technology in many areas of activity poses challenges to the disciplinary boundaries that includes an increasing set of technical topics. An inability to redress these challenges could lead to conceptually stunted development of blockchain technology, missed opportunities to inform other disciplines, and a failure to potently contribute to solving the critical problems of modern time. Against this backdrop, this study uses an established topic modelling technique, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to inductively structure insights from the current body of research on blockchain technology, outline current research scope as well as overlooked topics, and examine cross-disciplinary research patterns and trends. In particular, the analysis of 3,644 articles reveals the weak predominance of interdisciplinary type of knowledge contributions with strong bipartisan between theory-based and solution-based paradigms. Technical research disciplines over-emphasize on topics of solution-based research, whereas, non-technical disciplines under-emphasize the role of technical research disciplines in understanding the interjected phenomenon of blockchain technology concerning theory and practice. Therefore, our analysis advocates the embeddedness of blockchain technology across multiple research disciplines and provides initial foundation for further interdisciplinary enquiry outside of rigid theoretical boundaries of traditional disciplines. The contributions of this study are two-fold. First, it provides a broader overview of intra-and-inter-disciplinary research patterns and trends across research disciplines. Second, the outline of disregarded and highly interdisciplinary topics may open up avenues of new research that subside the weakness of cumulative research tradition of blockchain's research space.