Shedding Light on the Blockchain Disintermediation Mystery : A Review and Future Research Agenda

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Feulner, Simon ; Guggenberger, Tobias ; Stoetzer, Jens-Christian ; Urbach, Nils:
Shedding Light on the Blockchain Disintermediation Mystery : A Review and Future Research Agenda.
In: Proceedings of the 30th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). - Timisoara, Romania , 2022

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Blockchain technology has been in the interest of IS researchers and practitioners for several years. One key reason for this curiosity is the possibility to carry out peer-to-peer transactions without a trusted intermediary. Building upon this capability, many researchers posited that blockchain technology would remove traditional intermediaries from their market position. This process has been described in electronic markets literature as Disintermediation. However, other researchers proposed a more distinct perspective by proposing that blockchain technology will not facilitate Disintermediation in all settings.
Thus, no unified view on this topic exists yet. Our literature review identifies three dominating concepts in blockchain literature: Extensive Disintermediation, Limited Disintermediation, and Re-Intermediation. We further highlight in our findings that most of the identified literature does not consider all market functions as described in the electronic markets literature. Hence, we provide a structured overview of the field and possibilities for future research.