Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Dr. Bin Wang

Second Advisor

Dr. Jun Sun

Third Advisor

Dr. Diego Escobari

Abstract

With its complexities and portfolio-nature, the advent of blockchain technology presents several use cases to stakeholders for business value appropriation and financial gains. This 3-essay dissertation focuses on three exemplars and research approaches to understanding the value creation logics of blockchain technology for financial gains. The first essay is a conceptual piece that explores five main affordances of blockchain technology and how these can be actualized and assimilated for business value. Based on the analysis of literature findings, an Affordance-Experimentation-Actualization-Assimilation (AEAA) model is proposed. The model suggests five affordance-to-assimilation value chains and eight value interdependencies that firms can leverage to optimize their value creation and capture during blockchain technology implementation.

The second essay empirically examines the financial returns of public firms' blockchain adoption investments at the level of the three main blockchain archetypes (private-permissioned, public-permissioned and permissionless. Drawing upon Fichman's model of the option value of innovative IT platform investments, the study examines business value creation through firm blockchain strategy (i.e., archetype instances, decentralization, and complementarity), learning (i.e., blockchain patents and event participation), and bandwagon effects using quarterly data of firm archetype investments from 2015 to 2020. The study's propensity score matching utilization and fixed-effects modeling provide objective quantification of how blockchain adoption leads to increases in firm value (performance measured by Tobin's q) at the archetype level (permissionless, public permissioned, and private permissioned). Surprisingly, a more decentralized archetype and a second different archetype implementation are associated with a lower Tobin's q. In addition, IT-option proxy parameters such as blockchain patent originality, participation in blockchain events, and network externality positively impact firm performance, whereas the effect of blockchain patents is negative.

As the foremost and more established use case of blockchain technology whose business value is accessed in either of the five affordances and exemplifies a permissionless archetype for financial gains, bitcoin cryptocurrency behavior is studied through the lens of opinion leaders on Twitter. The third essay this relationship understands the hourly price returns and volatility shocks that sentiments from opinion leaders generate and vice-versa. With a dynamic opinion leader identification strategy, lexicon and rule-based sentiment analytics, I extract sentiments of the top ten per cent bitcoin opinion leaders' tweets. Controlling for various economic indices and contextual factors, the study estimates a vector autoregression model (VAR) and finds that finds that Bitcoin return granger cause Polarity but the influence of sentiment subjectivity is marginal and only stronger on bitcoin price volatility. Several key implications for blockchain practitioners and financial stakeholders and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Comments

Copyright 2022 Daniel Narh Treku. All Rights Reserved.

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