Blockchain's Potential to Combat Procurement Frauds

Abstract

One of the big issue in procurement is fraud, and many companies go through deep investigation before offering a job for the right candidate as the job is very sensitive as large budgets allocated to procure goods and services for business. Procurement fraud, thus,  is likely to occur in the procurement department  since they deal with money, through dealing with vendors for material, goods, services, transportation, logistics, distribution of products, warehousing, or other benefits in exchange for awarding the contract, and frauds are then possible based on quid pro quo, whereby an  advantage is given in exchange for awarding the contract. To this end, using the traditional methods to control such frauds are not easy and could be faded away very soon,  especially with existing and emerging digital technologies such as Blockchain.  The paper reviewed how Blockchain is able to eradicate procurement frauds through focusing on the usability and functionality of the technology in procurement. The study uses the experiment research method to measure procurement frauds as the independent variable and the power of Blockchain to control such frauds as the dependent variables, using the nonexperimental research method. The study tries to highlight the challenges and possible directions of Blockchain research in protecting procurement from any types of frauds that could be happening, which are impossible through the traditional methods. Finally, this paper points out the future directions in the Blockchain technology in procurement.