Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Informationstechnik FIT

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  • Publication
    Unchaining Social Businesses
    ( 2017)
    Schweizer, André
    ;
    Schlatt, Vincent
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    ;
    Fridgen, Gilbert
    Social businesses are increasingly gaining relevance as alternatives to traditional businesses. Nonetheless, such organizations face specific problems. The emerging blockchain technology may represent an opportunity to solve several problems of social businesses and an alternative to established technologies. However, evidence about the potential of blockchain in social businesses is missing. We bridge this gap by designing, developing, and evaluating a blockchain-based crowdlending platform of a social business, following the design science research approach. The evaluation and comparison to a non-blockchain solution allows us to generate generalizable knowledge and derive implications for both research and practice. Our research shows that blockchain enables otherwise unsustainable social business models, mainly by replacing intermediaries and requires changes in software engineering practices. Further, our findings illustrate that blockchain raises challenges and uncertainties and opens promising avenues for further research.