Blockchain technology has been recommended for the sustainability in the manufacturing industry, owing to its benefits in terms of real-time transparency and cost savings. To verify this, we first examine how firms can employ distributed ledger technology by adopting blockchain technology to achieve real-time transparency and cost savings. We also review the current blockchain technology applications in the financial industry and supply chains to explain this technology’s mechanisms for enabling real-time transparency and cost savings in the manufacturing industry. Finally, we theoretically compare the profits of manufacturing firms in two managerial delegation games under a duopoly situation. This theoretical model suggests that the real-time transparency and cost savings secured by blockchain technology improve the profitability and competitiveness of manufacturing firms, which, in turn, assure the sustainability in the manufacturing industry.

We analyze firms' supply chain transparency and ethical production practices using a game-theoretic approach. If the rival's supply chain is more likely to be ethical and the technology used to ensure supply chain transparency is efficient, ethical suppliers prefer to disclose their supply chain information, whereas unethical suppliers do not.The supply chain transparency level can be a signal of the supplier's ethical quality level, as both consumers' demand for ethical production and R&D efficiency for supply chain transparency increase. Consumers can distinguish ethical suppliers through their level of supply chain transparency because blockchain technology improves R&D efficiency.