Abstract:
The Sri Lankan fashion, particularly in the Western Province is an indispensable
sector of its economy and still cannot afford to get transparency in supply chain.
Rising global consciousness of ethical sourcing, sustainability and accountability
merits the use of technology as interventions. Although blockchain has been
discussed in related studies, not much empirical research exists on the use of
blockchain in fashion supply chain in developing countries like Sri Lanka. The
proposed research will help close this gap because it will focus on the role of
blockchain usage in providing transparency in the supply chain in Sri Lanka in the
fashion industry with the view of promoting traceability, smart contracts, and
enhanced consumer trust. The adopted research design was quantitative research
based on positivist paradigm. Through structured questionnaires, a survey on 384
respondents (companies producing apparel, suppliers and logistics partners) was
carried out through employing a stratified random sampling method. Descriptive
statistics, correlation and multiple regression were used to analyze data. The results
show that there is a high positive, statistically significant relationship between the
adoption of blockchain and the transparency of the supply chain (R 2 = 0.62, p <
0.001). The studied use cases were able to imply an increase in accountability and
automation of compliance processes due to smart contracts, better product tracing and
ethical sourcing due to traceability, and the trust of consumers as the most dominant
force drilling towards greater transparency. The researchers find that blockchain
could introduce definable benefits to the transparency of fashion supply chains in Sri
Lanka, but issues like high prices, lack of expertise, and the absence of regulation
impairs broader use. The recommendations to the policies will be enhancing
technological capacity of SMEs and favorable regulatory environment.
Contextualizing the potential of blockchain in the context of an emerging economy,
this study not only adds to academic knowledge, but also to practical changes in the
way digital supply chains in fashion become developed.
