Blockchain Technology in Accounting and Business: Implications for Financial Reporting, Operational Efficiency, and Firm Performance - A Thematic Review

Abstract

Blockchain technology is increasingly applied beyond cryptocurrency in accounting and business, but its reported benefits are not realized uniformly across organizations. This study reviews how blockchain-enabled capabilities relate to financial reporting, operational efficiency, and firm performance and identifies the conditions shaping those relationships. A qualitative thematic literature review was conducted using peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, scholarly books, and related academic publications, with emphasis on studies published between 2017 and 2025. Evidence was synthesized around reporting outcomes, operational efficiency, firm performance, adoption conditions, and implementation challenges. The literature indicates that blockchain can strengthen transaction traceability, information integrity, auditability, coordination, and process automation. These mechanisms are associated with improved reporting transparency, operational efficiency, innovation capability, competitiveness, and selected performance measures. However, technological readiness, managerial support, cybersecurity, interoperability, infrastructure, and regulatory conditions substantially influence implementation outcomes. Blockchain is therefore better understood as a contingent organizational capability whose value depends on complementary organizational and institutional conditions rather than as an automatic source of superior performance.