**2. Methodology**

This paper is more oriented towards a structured literature review, as it focusses on the systematic method, meaning a detailed plan of the path and steps undertaken to select, scan, and analyse the literature to reduce biases and improve transparency (Tranfield et al. 2003; Hofmann and Bosshard 2017). A structured literature review is generally applied to close the research–practice gap (Touboulic and Walker 2015; Hofmann and Bosshard 2017) and for developing the propositions and future research directions. This article adapts the procedures used by Denyer and Tranfield (2009) and Hofmann and Bosshard (2017), as shown in Figure 1.

**Figure 1.** Literature review procedure (adapted with permission from Hofmann and Bosshard 2017).

#### **3. Formulation of Research Questions**

This literature review is motivated by the following three research questions:

RQ1: What are the factors that influence the use of supply chain finance?

RQ2: What are the outcomes of supply chain finance?

RQ3: What are the solutions to supply chain finance that have been discussed in the existing literature?

The article aims to answer these three research questions, and the researchers believe that answering these questions will lead to the contribution of this article to the supply chain finance literature. Therefore, the paper focuses on the three themes, i.e., the factors, outcomes, and solutions of supply chain finance.

#### **4. Locating the Research Articles**

Articles were searched from the scientific research databases of Scopus and Web of Science using a string of keywords, i.e., "Supply Chain Finance" OR "Supply Chain Financing" OR "Financial Supply Chain" OR "Financial Value Chain". From the search results, conference proceedings were removed. Scopus produced a result of 182 articles and Web of Science produced a result of 45 search results. This review article concentrated specifically on three themes:


First of all, the abstract of the articles was read; then, the body of the articles was also carefully read, and only those articles fitting to the themes were selected for final review. The majority of the articles in the Web of Science were overlapping with that of Scopus. It is understandable that the Web of Science indexed a lesser number of journals, and most of them are listed in Scopus as well. Finally, 70 articles were considered for the review. The process of the identification, screening, derivation of eligibility documents, and final inclusion of the documents for review is given in Figure 2.

**Figure 2.** Procedure for locating, screening, and selecting documents.

#### **5. Classification of the Articles**

The classification of selected and collected literature is done as per the format shown in Table 1. Initially, the findings of the articles reviewed were grouped in the head 'findings'. However, whether the findings were related to 'factors' or/and 'outcomes' was further analysed. Thus, separate heads for 'factors' and 'outcomes' were created. The rest of the heads under which categorisation was done are shown in Table 1, which was completed using Microsoft Excel.



#### **6. Synthesis of Structure Literature Review**

This article does not claim to cover the entire literature on the supply chain finance exhaustively; instead, based on the articles reviewed, it provides a snapshot of the supply chain finance regarding three themes: factors, outcomes, and solutions. Also based on the analysis and review, it provides a path for future research work.

#### **7. Results and Findings**
