Absorptive Capacity, Blockchain and Food Traceability: An Empirical Invetigation

Food holds a major role in human societies and involved from different essential actors, such as farmers, distributers, retailers, consumers, etc., which forms the food supply chain and argues as one of the most complex and challenge systems. Although traceability forms basis of its food supply chain, but it still faces some fundamental problems. Current research indicates that blockchain is a promising technology for handling these problems, in which various nodes (actors) are connected through the blockchain traceability system with efficiency, feasibility and trust. However, many mysteries are still existing in the blockchain food traceability system, such as the dynamic interactions among the nodes and the responses for the frequent contextual changes are still waiting for discover urgently. In this study adopted absorptive capacity, as the theoretical lens, for discovering the blockchain traceability system node’s capability for absorbing the blockchain as new knowledge, the interaction among the chain nodes, and the chain nodes’ absorption on the contextual changes.