What role will blockchain play within the maritime shipping industry in five years? - A study using scenario planning to identify indicators of future industry transformation

Abstract

The strong majority of the total carriage within global trade today is seaborne. Huge amounts of goods are handled and transported with maritime shipping everyday, making the industry one of the more prominent in terms of affecting the global economy. Albeit such an impactful global player and vital component for the global economy, the industry still struggles with patterns of conservatism, manual handling as well as a relatively low pace of technological change. One of the technological forces that have been identified as a potential candidate for impacting the maritime shipping industry within five years is blockchain, however, no consensus is yet established in regards to what such a future will behold or what role the technology will play within the industry. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology, a system that distributes data through electronic transaction without the need for a third-party responsible for validating transactions. Within blockchains, all transactions can be traced, and they enable higher levels of security as it is difficult to tamper with the transactions. The possibilities of blockchain are therefore many and it creates an interesting dimension in terms of how its characteristics are suited in a future context of an industry valuing traditions and displaying a cultural barrier to change. Hence, the thesis is aimed at investigating what role blockchain technology might have within the maritime shipping industry in five years.

To reach the purpose of this thesis, a scenario planning analysis has been conducted. Scenario planning is a valuable tool in achieving a greater understanding of the future within industries experiencing a great level of uncertainty and industries that are going through change, such as the maritime shipping industry. From the study, two development factors emerged to be most likely to have a significant influence on the industry and the future role of blockchain: if the pattern of trust is based on traditional business relationships or technological solutions, and what level of transparency evident within industry value chains. The scenario planning analysis resulted in four plausible future scenarios for the industry where blockchain technology play different roles depending on the pattern of trust and the level of transparency. The thesis concludes that blockchain can provide significant value in a scenario where trust is based on technology and the level of transparency is high. Furthermore, it can provide somewhat value in the scenarios where the pattern of trust is based on technology and the level of transparency is low, or the opposite. Lastly, the study found that blockchain cannot provide value in a scenario where the pattern of trust is based on traditional values and the level of transparency is low. With these results in mind, managers and enthusiasts receive insights of future plausible scenarios for the maritime shipping industry and academics receive practical applications of scenario planning as well as contribution to the sparse research on blockchain within a maritime shipping context.