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Special issue call for papers from Journal of Organizational Change Management

Shades of change with and through blockchain

Guest editors: Luca Ferri, Rosanna Spanò, Yochanan Altman

Firms’ technology represents a constantly evolving field striving to outdo itself, fostering paradigm-shifting innovations. The boundaries of technology development are nowadays continuously pushed forward by developers, scientists, entrepreneurs and government; and, among others, blockchain has quickly gained a highly visible position in the technology domain. Blockchain is a new database technology, a distributed ledger that records and maintains indefinitely an ever-growing list of data records, which, importantly, cannot be altered or tampered with.

The debate on blockchain revolves around its intuitive applications being empowered trough a network architecture, progressively shedding light on the manifold implications of this innovation for the daily activities of firms, teams and roles. However, notwithstanding the attention that blockchain has gained in the media, research still seems to be lagging behind, leaving several crucial questions as yet unanswered, with contributions largely limited to theoretical speculations. The empirical and practical implications of this disruptive technology remain under-researched, with the few exceptions of papers that focus on crypto currencies.

The changes that blockchain instigates are highly disruptive on firms at any level, within companies and among companies. Thus, it is necessary to explore what is beyond the tool, and to better understand how the manifold impacts of blockchain take place. How, why, and to what extent blockchain is likely to steer the full spectrum of firms’ daily activities and practices are the core questions that this special issue aims to answer.

Other central aspects this special issue aims to unfold concern the changes necessary to implement blockchain, the changes arising with blockchain, the changes achievable trough blockchain. More specifically, this special issue is conceived to deal with both what and how issues, and to encompass a multitude of foci at the institutional, organizational, and individual levels of analysis, as well as how these are intertwined. Change is implicitly at the core of these issues.

This special issue is interested in evidence from a wide range of industries and accepts both qualitative and quantitative contributions, which however have to be rigorous in terms of methods and theoretical foundations. Conceptual papers would be considered as well.

Submission Info

Submissions to be made via the Journal of Organizational Change Management ScholarOne manuscript submission portal http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jocm, and authors are advised to follow the journal guidelines found here.

Tentative time line

Issue Call 2 January 2020

Submissions 30 June 2020

First decisions (reject or pass for review) September 2020

First Revise & Resubmit deadline November 2020

Final Acceptance January 2021

Publication online February 2021