Equifinality in Blockchain Resilience: The Role of Organizational, Environmental, and Cybersecurity Factors

A common misconception of blockchain technologies is that they are inherently resilient. However, recent failures of blockchain-supported applications have demonstrated that other factors play a role despite the strengths of the underlying technology. Existing research has analyzed blockchain resilience within sectors and has not been generalizable across industries. Additionally, much of this research examines the independent effects of individual and organizational factors and their isolated contributions to blockchain resilience. In this paper, we suggest that blockchain resilience is a combined function of organizational capabilities, the business environment, and cybersecurity issues. This approach emphasizes the concept of equifinality, which assumes that a system can reach the same final state from various initial conditions and along a variety of paths. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, unlike previous sector-based research, we approach blockchain resilience with a broader lens. Our sector-agnostic examination of blockchain resilience will provide applicability across industries. Second, our paper moves beyond exploring factors in isolation to theorizing about the interdependencies of organizational capabilities and environmental and cybersecurity factors, including how they may complement or substitute with one another in contributing to blockchain resilience. Third, we will examine the applicability of equifinality within the blockchain context.