Blockchain, Leadership and Management: Business as Usual or Radical Disruption?

Abstract

The Internet provided the world with interconnection. However, it did not provide it with trust. Trust is lacking everywhere in our society and is the reason for the existence of powerful intermediaries aggregating power. Trust is what prevents the digital world to take over. This has consequences for organisations: they are inefficient because time, energy, money and passion are wasted on verifying everything happens as decided. Managers play the role of intermediaries in such case: they connect experts with each others and instruct them of what to do. As a result, in our expert society, people’s engagement is low because no one is there to inspire and empower them. In other words, our society faces an unprecedented lack of leadership. Provided all those shortcomings, the study imagines the potential repercussions, especially in the context of management, of implementing a blockchain infrastructure in any type of organisation. Indeed, the blockchain technology seems to be able to remedy to those issues, for this distributed and immutable ledger provides security, decentralisation and transparency. In the context of a blockchain economy, the findings show that value creation will be rearranged, with experts directly collaborating with each others, and hierarchy being eliminated. This could, in turn, render managers obsolete, as a blockchain infrastructure will automate most of the tasks. As a result, only a strong, action-oriented, leadership would maintain the organisation together. This leadership-in-action would consist in igniting people to take action; coach members of the organisations so that their contribution makes sense in the greater context of life.

How Blockchain Technology Can Benefit Marketing: Six Pending Research Areas

“…Blockchain technology can mitigate certain risks associated with the potentially devastating impact of click fraud by creating a more trustworthy digital marketing environment for consumers and brands alike. A blockchain-based platform can motivate stakeholders in the advertising industry to operate in an open and collaborative environment where each party acts with honesty and integrity (Chartier-Rueg and Zweifel, 2017). For example, information asymmetry (i.e., when one party has more or more accurate information than the other party) is one of the motivations for click fraud which can be addressed in a blockchain ecosystem.…”