Examining readiness of organizations to adopt BEES – blockchain-enabled ethical sourcing

Purpose Governments devised ethical sourcing norms as customers became conscious about the material origins of their food and lifestyle consumables. Alongside, supply chains got complicated, spanning countries, organizations, which made tracking of material and process harder. This prompted a few companies to adopt blockchain, which uses immutable digitized records to monitor goods and information movement. But blockchain adoption is expensive and may fail for various reasons, including organizational factors. Our research case study examines the readiness of organizations to successfully adopt “Blockchain-Enabled Ethical Sourcing” in the context of their organization’s intent and structure. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectoral case studies of three organizations implementing BEES were qualitatively analyzed for material traceability through the “Farmonaut” company, as their common blockchain implementation partner. Findings Our findings help executive leadership in assessing how organizational intent (sociological elements) interplays with institutional structure (operational elements) to influence BEES adoption. Originality/value We introduce adoption readiness matrix, a quadrant-based framework along with a lightweight questionnaire-instrument to ascertain a company’s BEES adoption readiness, bridging theory and practice.