From authentication to ‘Hanseatic governance’: Blockchain as organizational technology

Abstract

Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible application, including – but not limited to – land and other registries, global trade systems. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian, anarchic agenda, recent developments of commercial applications have illustrated that it can been dissociated from a particular ideological framing. The purpose of our paper is to identify and classify core properties of blockchain as an organizational technology and related modes of blockchain governance. We do this by looking at a number of case studies which highlight a number of governance design issues as well as unintended effects of the technology and related design choices. We are exploring the linkages between blockchain application properties and related design options and choices.