Reconciling Institutional Theory with BlockchainEnabled ERP: A MiddleRange Theory of Financial Fraud Detection

Abstract

Integrating blockchain and smart contracts into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems promises continuous financialfraud detection, yet adoption still faces unresolved theoretical and practical gaps. Institutional Theory falls short in explaining firms' internalefficiency motivations when technical solutions such as zeroknowledge proofs (ZKP) surpass regulatory barriers, while the absence of professional audit standards for validating oracle integrity raises the risk of “immutable garbage.”This study conducts a systematic literature review following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, synthesizing 33 studies on blockchainERP integration for financial fraud detection in accounting and auditing.The synthesis indicates four priority gaps (priority score ≥8): theoretical, empirical (oracle reliability), contextual, and practical. We propose a contextual modification of Institutional Theory and two MiddleRange Theory (MRT) propositions  P1 (oraclemiddleware integration improves auditevidence integrity and crossorganization reconciliation speed) and P2 (smart contracts acting as realtime audit oracles surpass the effectiveness of periodic audit in fraud detection).Implications include the need for operational audit standards to validate oracle integrity and for middleware designs that reconcile deterministic ERP databases with blockchain consensus. Confirmation is bounded to permissioned blockchains with low latency; crossjurisdiction generalization remains untested