Blockchain Potential for Supply Chain Reconfiguration in Post COVID-19 Era

The spread of the coronavirus has had a major impact on the global economy, highlighting the shortcomings and weaknesses of global supply chains. Major issues such as supply disruptions, shortages of raw materials and spare parts, restricted transport, and ineffective exchange of information between actors within the supply chain have resulted. The empirical evidence of these events is widely discussed in the literature, which has brought out the urgent need to rethink the configuration of customer-supplier relations at an overall level. One technology that is much discussed in the literature and potentially useful in supporting supply chain processes is the blockchain technology. Blockchain has been gaining attraction across different sectors, even if there are still few applications in supply chain management, most at an experimental level. The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential applications of blockchain to support supply chain processes, to fill the gaps highlighted during the Covid pandemic. Through the analysis of the literature, the authors aim to give a preliminary overview on the relationships between Covid-19 impacts and benefits achievable by the application of blockchain technology in the supply chain, for an effective supply chain reconfiguration in a post-covid era.