3.1.2. Collating Articles

This section details the steps followed for article selection. We carried out a systematic literature search in Science Direct, Business Source Premier, Scopus and Google Scholar. The article collation process involved the following steps: 1. database identification (Science Direct, Scopus, Business Source Premier and Google scholar); 2. finalising keywords and search criteria (for the preliminary search); 3. identifying the initial set of articles and analysing manually and through textual analysis; 4. constructing the final sample of articles; and 5. classifying the identified relevant articles into major themes; Science Direct, Scopus and Google Scholar were selected as suggested by finance specialist librarians at the university as being the primary databases1 with an exhaustive list of industry and academic articles relevant to blockchain technology in finance.

The article search included several permutations of the following keywords: "finance+blockchain", "decentralised system+finance", "decentralised network+finance", "decentralised ledger+finance", "cryptocurrencies+corporate governance", "digital currencies+corporate governance", "bitcoin+corporate governance", "Ethereum+finance", "ICO+finance," "financial services+blockchain", "security+blockchain", "ethics+blockchain", "blockchain+corporate governance", "financial intermediaries+blockchain", "COVID-19+blockchain", and "regulation+blockchain" in the title, abstracts, text, and keywords fields of the search engine. Moreover, the reference list from selected articles was further analysed to identify more articles not previously captured by the search criteria (snowball effect). This preliminary search yielded 851 records in total from all the databases. These articles include peer-reviewed research articles, conference proceedings papers, consulting and professional body reports, white papers, book chapters, short notes and short surveys. Subsequently, we segregated academic and articles and constructed a final sample of 183 blockchain-related articles (28 industry and 155 academic articles), which was used in the analysis, possessing factors relevant to or that can be re-purposed for corporate governance.

<sup>1</sup> Several search refinement features of Scopus and Science Direct are used following specific articles that might be in a grey area with regard to interest. However, for good measure we conducted a regular Google search as well and reviewed search results so as not to miss important industry reports.
