LIVING THE LEDGER: A DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO LOGISTICS EXECUTIVES’ LIVED EXPERIENCE OF BLOCKCHAIN ADOPTION READINESS IN SILK ROAD TRADE NETWORKS

Abstract

The accelerating expansion of cross-border trade along the modern Silk Road, propelled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the digitalisation of global supply chains, has reshaped the everyday work of logistics operations management. Although blockchain technology is widely promoted as a remedy for fragmented information flows, customs delays, and counterfeit risk, far less is known about how the executives who would actually live with the technology experience the prospect of adopting it. This study explores that lived experience. Adopting a descriptive (Husserlian) phenomenological design, the inquiry sought to understand the meaning that senior logistics and supply-chain executives operating across Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and the Thai–Lao–Chinese trade corridors ascribe to blockchain adoption readiness. Eighteen purposively selected executives and policy specialists participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews, each lasting between sixty and ninety minutes, continued until thematic saturation was reached. Data were analysed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, supported by reflexive coding and an audit trail; trustworthiness was established through the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Six essential themes emerged: (1) documentation as a daily burden; (2) trust as the unseen infrastructure of trade; (3) the felt weight of power asymmetry; (4) relationships as the real network; (5) inertia and the comfort of paper; and (6) waiting for the state. The fundamental structure of the phenomenon was captured as a lived tension between an imagined transparency that participants longed for and a relational reality they were reluctant to disturb. The findings reframe blockchain adoption not as a calculable outcome but as an unfolding relational and institutional experience, and they offer context-sensitive guidance for executives, policymakers, and BRI-related logistics consortia.