An ISM-MICMAC approach for analyzing the relationship between blockchain adoption criteria in a pharmaceutical supply chain: Tunisian case

Purpose In the context of digitalizing the supply chain of different sectors, the blockchain technology (BT) is emerged and becomes one of the most interesting and debated research topics. A few years ago, this technology was implemented for the first time in the financial sector, which is currently extended to be used in many other areas, mainly the health-care sector. The success of this technology stems from its ability to enhance the performance, security, consistency of sharing medical data within the whole system and the analysis of medical records. Technically, the BT is defined as a decentralized digital ledger that records transactions between the stakeholders in a supply chain. Thus, they could gain better control and find severe mistakes and the unsafe ones in the medical field. The purpose of this paper is to address a preliminary study of the BT adoption in a real pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) of the Tunisian case. Design/methodology/approach Indeed, the authors propose an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) combined with the cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis. This methodology is known as an effective one used to identify the criteria that influence the implementation of the BT, analyze the relationships between them and delighting the most impactful ones. Findings The readiness criteria for the adoption of the BT for the considered system are identified which are 10 ones and the structural relationship between them is uncovered through many interviews with experts. Hence, the found results define the most crucial criteria that should be valorized amongst the other criteria. Originality/value The originality of this study stems from its theoretical and practical relevance regarding the potential of the pharmaceutical system and the importance of the integration of new technologies as the BT. The ISM-MICMAC approach seems to be very performant for such preliminary study of the BT adoption in the Tunisian pharmaceutical system.