The focus should be on these outcomes, not just the adoption and operation of the technology itself. According to a survey from ACCA members, embracing digital tools like AI can yield numerous organizational benefits, such as increased flexibility, enhanced quality of products and services (78%), and better performance in sustainability, transparency, and regulatory compliance (72%). Take generative AI as an instance; these models are celebrated for their efficiency in digesting and summarizing vast amounts of data and their capacity to generate original content from that data. They open new avenues in reporting, analysis, and risk evaluation when used with caution. However, there are inherent risks, especially if the generative AI models are not precisely trained or refined for a specific task or the latest data.
- Furthermore, keeping up to date with industry publications and guidance surrounding blockchain technology will help bridge the learning curve for when this technology gains mass adoption.
- There is no commonly shared point of view among researchers on the best way to regulate cryptoassets.
- Kend and Nguyen (2020) found that auditors are skeptical of the usefulness of blockchain for auditing.
- With the improved regulatory framework, we also propose that in the future governments may develop national cryptocurrencies, e.g. crypto-euros or crypto dollars, that will be easier and faster to use compared to existing currencies.
Further work is required from accounting bodies to accept new types of digital assets and develop standards that will solve the issues related to their recognition, measurement and disclosure. In the future, the implementation of blockchain may also raise questions related to the regulation of social and environmental accounting that becomes possible with this technology. All this will help to improve transparency further and decrease information asymmetry in the market.
1 Awareness of blockchain-based accounting
Our aim with this paper was to define the key topics and trends, past, present and future, that concern researchers in blockchain for accounting. Our analysis systematically identified these topics by analysing 153 relevant papers. By combining machine-learning methods with more traditional approaches, we were able to draw a holistic picture of the critical advances and trends in the corpus of literature. The results indicate that the most widely discussed topics are the changing role of accountants, new challenges for auditors, the opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology application, and the regulation of cryptoassets. It is also important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of joining a public or a private blockchain (O’Leary, 2017). There are many different configurations of blockchain, e.g. peer-to-peer and public, cloud-based, private and these all need to be analysed before they can be soundly implemented in different settings.
- First, this SLR provides a clear picture of the state of the accounting research on blockchain using bibliographic and narrative analyses.
- For example, several authors discuss the advantages of using blockchain to record transactions on a real-time basis (Yermack, 2017; Dai and Vasarhelyi, 2017).
- Second, we aim to go beyond the mere bibliometric description of variables such as authors, countries and keywords.
- A blockchain is distributed and highly available and retains a secure record of proof that the transaction occurred.
Finally, for coding analysis, we use the Deedose web application particularly suitable for ensuring that the inter-rater reliability (IRR) links with the degree of consistency in how the code system is applied (Talanquer, 2014). In the next subsection, we provide an analytical description of the coding framework adopted. Section 2 describes the current literature and why bibliometric analysis using open coding methods may facilitate our research aims. Moreover, section 5 provides an in-depth data interpretation, comments and critique on the main findings.
How Could Blockchain Change Business and Economic Activities?
But it’s just going to require more expertise and making sure things are configured right. It seems like now, where the profession needs to be looking is they’ve got to figure out how to handle the accounting part of it. But a lot of stuff you mentioned, they’ve got to know these terms, so they can have some idea of what their clients are talking about. But this, the whole, what is probably higher on the hype cycle right now is stablecoins.
Decentralization is defined as a real model of cooperation between all subjects (Angiulli et al., 2018). Blockchain shares, records and transmits information by storing it in real-time and continuously in different locations throughout the network, confirming the verification of the data (Smith, 2018; Tiberius and Hirth, 2019). There is a particular challenge of continuity of action for professionals at the audit level.
It’s immutability and decentralized nature make it unique, but its function of recording transactions makes it familiar to those in the accountancy profession. Developing professional knowledge and understanding of this emerging technology and its applications will be crucial to ensuring the profession’s relevance and future readiness. First, in line with Garanina et al. (2021), Mancini et al. (2021), Lombardi et al. (2021) and Secinaro et al. (2021), the research on https://lamdatrade.pro/ studies is primarily qualitative. Contrary to other studies, our SLR was updated at the beginning of 2022; therefore, it includes the most recent literature reviews published on the topic. However, especially in light of other SLRs on similar topics, we see an opportunity to perform future in-depth analyses to test new methods, including empirical and quantitative methods.
1 The changing role of accountants
The main advantage of blockchain technology is that once a transaction is approved by the nodes in the network, it cannot be reversed or re-sequenced. The inability to modify a transaction is essential for the https://capitalprof.team/ blockchain’s integrity and ensures that all parties have accurate and identical records. Because blockchain is a distributed system, all changes to a ledger are transparent to all the members of a network.
Furthermore, blockchain is continuously being developed with innovative applications. For example, smart contracts that facilitate the automation of self-executing contracts based on predetermined terms and conditions. Accounting With Blockchain
Using blockchain technology allows users to integrate accounting into business activities rather than separate accounting from business activities. This is achieved via a triple entry accounting system that, essentially, maintains three ledgers, one each by the seller, the buyer and a public set of (cryptographically authorized) records.
How Blockchain Is Transforming Accounting, Auditing and Finance: A Systematic Review
Blockchains and their almost immediate provision of an immutable record of transactions provides for shared transaction information, automatically synchronized across each location. Such a provision of information removes transaction level reconciliations and facilitates developing continuous auditing. For auditors, this offers the potential for a transition from a periodical or annual exercise to a continuous matter, one that can now encompass both parties to a transaction simultaneously. The key feature in blockchain is that anything that is stored on the blockchain is there forever, the information is immutable and cannot be erased. The information that is stored on the blockchain offers us a level of transparency that has not previously been seen. It means that if Person A owns something and transfers the ownership or value of it to Person B there will always be a record in the blockchain that Person A owned it.
There should therefore be more discussion in the future among researchers about theoretical evolution. Moreover, more theoretical investigations should be undertaken to ascertain how the triple-entry model can replace the double-entry (Cai, 2021; Secinaro, 2020). As demonstrated, blockchain can be an aggregator of stakeholders and few theoretical studies to date investigate this area, for example, through the lens of actor–network theory. Finally, starting from Dal Mas et al. (2020a, b), the accounting field could benefit from further studies that aim to investigate how blockchain will change accountants’ business model activity and assess whether this technology is sustainable for them. Additionally, more real cases will need to be explored to see how technology might disrupt the auditing community (Marrone and Hazelton, 2019).
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Given this, we think the future will result in more case studies and practically-oriented papers that empirically test blockchain’s impact on accounting (Alles, 2018). According to Zhang et al. (2017), new business reporting models, such as triple-entry accounting, will demand investigations into how blockchain strengthens or alters functions like valuations and contracting. Further, the monitoring role of accountants in managing information for the benefit of stakeholders will need to be established (Zhang et al., 2017). However, Alles (2018) warns that there is a danger of the “empirical takeover” effect when papers become empirically driven. Thus, there is a need to establish a solid theoretical and conceptual background for how blockchain will disrupt accountancy. One of the challenges for implementing blockchain is context (Stratopoulos and Calderon, 2018).