Abstract
Blockchain-enabled value co-creation (VCC) has emerged as a critical mechanism for coordinating collaboration within contemporary banking ecosystems characterised by digital complexity, regulatory oversight, and multi-actor interdependence. Despite increasing experimentation with distributed ledger technologies, inter-organisational collaboration among banks, fintech firms, regulators, and technology providers remains constrained by fragmented infrastructures, institutional uncertainty, and persistent power asymmetries.
This study investigates how blockchain-enabled value co-creation unfolds within the South African banking ecosystem. In doing so, it addresses both theoretical and empirical gaps at the intersection of blockchain innovation, governance, and collaborative value creation in regulated emerging-market contexts.
Adopting a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, the study integrates qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews and comparative case analyses of four national blockchain initiativesProject Khokha 1, Project Khokha 2, Project Khokha 2x, and OpenFMIwith quantitative validation using structural equation modelling of survey data collected from 101 ecosystem professionals.
The findings demonstrate that core blockchain mechanismstransparency, immutability, decentralisation, consensus, and smart contractssignificantly enhance trust, collaboration, and synergy among ecosystem participants. However, performance effects materialise primarily at the ecosystem level rather than through direct firm-level gains. This confirms that blockchain-enabled value co-creation is fundamentally systemic rather than transactional in nature.
The study makes four principal contributions. First, it extends Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) by integrating technological affordances, institutional theory, and power dynamics into a unified explanatory framework, addressing limitations in traditional service logic related to governance and socio-technical coordination. Second, it advances blockchain scholarship by demonstrating that decentralisation does not eliminate power asymmetries; rather, power is reconfigured through dispositional and facilitative circuits embedded within protocols, consortium arrangements, and regulatory architectures. Third, it provides empirical validation...