Abstract

The Blockchain technology has attracted a huge attention from both industry and academia. Despite the fact that there are great potentials of the blockchain, it is facing a number of technical challenges and social challenges. There is a substantial body of literature on the technical challenges and a limited number of researches that addressed the social challenges and opportunities of blockchain. Drawing on a multiple case study of twenty-one firms from six different Middle Eastern countries we synthesize the blockchain technology and IT in the Middle East literature to understand the challenges and opportunities of that technology in the Middle East. Our study identifies a classification of challenges and opportunities: Fine-tune challenges, estrangement challenges, sprint opportunities and act on opportunities and four associated factors: regulation, education, collaboration and culture. In doing this, our research extends and complements existing blockchain research and contributes to the IT literature in the Middle East

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