Abstract
Global entrepreneurship depends on trust and transparency to sustain commercial relationships stretching across borders, while conventional record-keeping systems have struggled to keep pace with the speed and scale of modern trade. This study examined the impact of blockchain technology on entrepreneurial transparency, trust, and the expansion of global trade, with particular attention to how distributed ledger systems reshape the way entrepreneurs verify transactions and manage supply chains. The central problem addressed was that despite growing enthusiasm for blockchain adoption, existing literature remained fragmented. They treat transparency, trust, and trade expansion as isolated outcomes rather than interconnected effects of a single technological shift. This is particularly within resource-constrained entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing economies. Guided by the Integrative Trust Theory and the Technology Acceptance Model, they explain how perceived trustworthiness and usability shape entrepreneurs’ willingness to adopt new technologies, with the study adopting a qualitative systematic literature review design. Secondary data were drawn from peer-reviewed journal articles, institutional reports, and policy documents published between 2017 and 2025, screened using the PRISMA 2020 protocol and analyzed through thematic content analysis. Findings revealed that blockchain’s immutable and decentralized ledger structure strengthened entrepreneurial trust by reducing information asymmetry between trading partners, while also shortening trade settlement times and lowering documentation costs that had traditionally depended on multiple intermediaries. The study concluded that blockchain’s greatest contribution to global trade expansion lies not merely in its technical architecture but in its capacity to substitute algorithmic trust for institutional trust in environments where formal institutions remain weak.
Keywords: Blockchain technology, entrepreneurial transparency, trust, global trade expansion, decentralized ledger.
Author Name(s):
Temitope Oluwafemi Ademola
Business Innovation, School of Business
Osiri University, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
+2348077301197, +2348102985374
ORCID:0009-0005-5680-6040
Jide Gboyega Okedeji
Business Innovation, School of Business
Osiri University, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
+234 703 802 4827
ORCID number – 0009-0000-7648-6180
Jamiyu Abiodun Ibraheem
Entrepreneurship Division
Federal College of Agriculture, Ishiagu,
Ebonyi state, Nigeria
+2348032459428
ORCID No – 0009-0005-8621-5305
Oluwatoyin Olayinka Odobo
Business Innovation, School of Business
Osiri University, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
+234 8055416853
ORCID No – 0009-0003-5248-6962
Simiat Oluwatoyin Usman
Business Innovation, School of Business
Osiri University, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
+234 808 948 5533
ORCID number – 0009-0005-3034-1249
Sandra Afriyie Agyemang
Marketing and Corporate Strategy,
KNUST School of Business
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology, Ghana
+233242258533
ORCID No: 0009-0006-6049-4729
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23089498
Copyright © [2026] The Author(s). Published by the Journal of People and Worldviews (JPW). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are properly credited.