The Impact of Blockchain on Corporate Responsibility: An Inquiry into the Fast-fashion Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to reach an understanding of people’s expectations about the impact of blockchain on corporate responsibility practices in the fast-fashion industry. Therefore, this thesis investigates the following research question: How do people expect that blockchain technology may impact corporate responsibility practices in the fast-fashion industry? To answer the research question of this thesis, in-depth, semi-structured expert interviews have been conducted with six people experienced in blockchain technology, corporate responsibility and/or the fast-fashion industry. Being concerned with reaching an understanding, the epistemological position of this research is social constructivism. Interpretivism serves as the philosophical position of this thesis, as an understanding of the research phenomenon has been reached through the interpretation of meanings. Qualitative content analysis has been deployed as a method for coding and categorizing the interview data. The coding scheme developed through qualitative content analysis has served as a tool for structuring the analysis of this thesis. Sensemaking constitutes the analytical perspective of this thesis, and has served to study the expectations held by the research participants about blockchain. Based on the individual sensemaking of the research participants, general expectations about blockchain have been derived. From the analysis it was found that people have general expectations about the outcome, the technical structure and the implementation of blockchain. These expectations have been discussed in conjunction with literature from the literature review about corporate responsibility, blockchain technology and the fastfashion industry to derive an answer to the research question. This thesis has found that people generally expect that blockchain’s ability to establish traceability and transparency, and the decentralized structure of the technology can impact corporate responsibility practices in the fast-fashion industry. However, it was also found that certain limitations exist inherently in the technology and the fast-fashion industry, which may obstruct the functioning and implementation of blockchain.