Transparency of financial practices in building reliable investment relationships

This study presents a systematic review of scholarly research examining the transparency of financial practices in the context of investment relations. The objective was to conceptualize how contemporary literature defines and operationalizes transparency and to identify the analytical mechanisms through which transparency influences investment behavior and capital allocation processes. The review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 framework. A structured search was performed in January 2026 in the Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases using an integrated Boolean query covering the period 1999–2025. The identification stage yielded 184 records. After duplicate removal, screening, and full-text eligibility assessment, the final analytical corpus comprised 42 peer-reviewed publications. The synthesis reveals that transparency is not treated as a single-dimensional reporting attribute but as a multilayered construct embedded in different explanatory models. Four dominant analytical configurations were identified. The first conceptualizes transparency as an informational mechanism that reduces asymmetry and directly affects investor reactions. The second interprets transparency as part of corporate governance and regulatory infrastructures, operating through institutional mediation. The third frames transparency as the outcome of procedural verification and audit assurance mechanisms that generate trust through credibility. The fourth reflects the contemporary expansion of transparency toward digital, ESG-integrated, and hybrid disclosure ecosystems. The findings demonstrate systematic heterogeneity in units of analysis, transparency proxies, and investment-related outcomes across these models. This heterogeneity explains the diversity of empirical results observed in the literature and underscores the absence of a unified theoretical core. The study contributes by mapping the conceptual architecture of transparency research within a single procedural framework and by clarifying the distinct causal logics linking financial transparency to investment relations. The results provide a structured foundation for further theoretical integration and empirical refinement in transparency–investment research.