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Passive investing has established itself as the dominant force in the world of professionally managed assets, surpassing the concept of index funds. Its meteoric rise is fueled by investors’ preference for its dual benefits of strong diversification and low cost. A comprehensive study of the economic model, addressed areas and market structure has not yet been conducted, despite the existence of numerous studies on more specific topics. To address this gap, this paper examines 943 articles on passive investing published between 1998 and 2022 in SCOPUS and Web of Science.

The study utilizes the most pertinent tools for conducting a systematic review by the PRISMA framework. This article is the result of SLR and extensive bibliometric analysis. Contextualized systematic literature review is used to screen and select bibliographic data, which is then subjected to a variety of bibliometric analyses. The study provides a bibliometric overview of works on passive investment research that are indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Bibliometrix, VoS Viewer and Cite Space are the tools used to conduct content and network analysis, to ascertain the present state of research, as well as its focus and direction.

Our exhaustive analysis yields important findings. One, the previous decade has witnessed a substantial increase in the number of publications and citations; in particular, the inter-disciplinary and international scope of related research has expanded; Second, the top three clusters on “active versus passive funds,” “price discovery and market structures” and “exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an alternative” account for more than fifty percent of the domain’s knowledge; Third, “Leveraged ETFs (LETFs)” and “environmental, social and governance (ESG)” are the two emerging themes in the passive investing research. Fourth, despite its many benefits, passive investing is not suitable for everyone. To get the most out of what passive investing has to offer, investors, intermediaries and regulators must all exercise sufficient caution. Our study makes a substantial contribution to the field by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the existing literature, highlighting key findings and implications, as well as future research directions.

While the study contributes significantly to the field of knowledge, it has several limitations that must be considered when interpreting its findings and implications. With our emphasis on academic journals, the study analyzed only peer-reviewed journal articles, excluding conference papers, reports and technical articles. While we are confident that our approach resulted in a comprehensive and representative database, our reliance on Elsevier Scopus and Web of Science may have resulted in us overlooking relevant work accessible only through other databases. Additionally, specific bibliometric properties may not be time-stable, and certain common distribution patterns of the passive investing literature may still be developing.

With this study, it has been possible to observe and chart the high growth trajectory of passive investing research globally, especially post-US subprime crisis. Despite the widespread adoption of passive investing as an investment strategy, it is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Market conditions change constantly, and it frequently requires an informed eye to determine when and how much to shift away from active investments and toward passive ones. Currency ETFs enable investors to implement a carry trade strategy in their portfolios; however, as a word of caution, currency stability and liquidity can play a significant role in international ETFs. Similarly, LETFs may be better suited for dynamic strategies and offer less value to a long-term investor. Lastly, the importance of investor education cannot be underestimated in the name of the highly diversified portfolio when using passive alternatives, for which necessary efforts are required by regulators and investors alike.

The inexorable trend to passive investing creates numerous issues for fund management, including fee and revenue pressure, which forces traditional managers to seek new revenue streams, such as illiquid and private assets, which also implies increased portfolio risk. Additionally, the increased transparency and efficiency associated with the ETF market indicates that managers must rethink the entire value chain, beginning with technology and the way investments interact. Passive investments have triggered changes in market structure that are still not fully understood or factored in. Active management and a range of valuation opinions on whether a price is “too low” or “too high” provide much-needed depth to a market as it attempts to strike a delicate balance between demand and supply forces, ensuring liquidity at all price points.

I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this paper and that no part of this manuscript has been published or submitted for publication.

This study examines the moderating role of information sharing on the effect of lead-time management on the performance of firms in the Zimbabwean motor industry.

Data were collected using Likert-based structured questionnaires from a sample of 105 employees in Zimbabwe. In addition, Pearson Correlation, Linear Regression and Moderation Regression analysis were employed to test the relationship between study variables.

The study found that fixed lead time, preprocessing lead time, processing lead time and postprocessing lead time significantly influence the performance of firms in the motor industry. The results also demonstrate that information sharing moderates the effect of lead-time management on firm performance in the motor industry.

Firms in the motor industry should establish long-term relationships with their suppliers and implement effective communication channels for timely and frequent information exchange regarding production schedules, inventory levels, quality standards and potential disruptions.

The current study aims to contribute to the scientific discourse on lead-time management, information sharing and performance in the motor industry. Furthermore, it extends knowledge on the performance of the motor industry in the African region.

Workplace silence impedes productivity, job satisfaction and retention, key issues for the hospital workforce worldwide. It can have a negative effect on patient outcomes and safety and human resources in healthcare organisations. This study aims to examine factors that influence workplace silence among hospital doctors in Ireland.

A national, cross-sectional, online survey of hospital doctors in Ireland was conducted in October–November 2019; 1,070 hospital doctors responded. This paper focuses on responses to the question “If you had concerns about your working conditions, would you raise them?”. In total, 227 hospital doctor respondents (25%) stated that they would not raise concerns about their working conditions. Qualitative thematic analysis was carried out on free-text responses to explore why these doctors choose to opt for silence regarding their working conditions.

Reputational risk, lack of energy and time, a perceived inability to effect change and cultural norms all discourage doctors from raising concerns about working conditions. Apathy arose as change to working conditions was perceived as highly unlikely. In turn, this had scope to lead to neglect and exit. Voice was seen as risky for some respondents, who feared that complaining could damage their career prospects and workplace relationships.

This study highlights the systemic, cultural and practical issues that pressure hospital doctors in Ireland to opt for silence around working conditions. It adds to the literature on workplace silence and voice within the medical profession and provides a framework for comparative analysis of doctors' silence and voice in other settings.

Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the performances of novel roadable personal air vehicle (PAV) concepts that meet established operational requirements with different types of engines.

The vehicle configuration was devised considering the dimensions and operational restrictions of the roads, runways and parking lots in South Korea. A folding wing design was adopted for road operations and parking. The propulsion designs considered herein use gasoline, diesel and hybrid architectures for longer-range missions. The sizing point of the roadable PAV that minimizes the wing area was selected, and the rate of climb, ground roll distance, cruise speed and service ceiling requirements were met. For various engine types and mission profiles, the performances of differently sized PAVs were compared with respect to the MTOW, wing area, wing span, thrust-to-weight ratio, wing loading, power-to-weight ratio, brake horsepower and fuel efficiency.

Unlike automobiles, the weight penalty of the hybrid system because of the additional electrical components reduced the fuel efficiency considerably. When the four engine types were compared, matching the total engine system weight, the internal combustion (IC) engine PAVs had better fuel efficiency rates than the hybrid powered PAVs. Finally, a gasoline-powered PAV configuration was selected as the final design because it had the lowest MTOW, despite its slightly worse fuel efficiency compared to that of the diesel-powered engine.

Although an electric aircraft powered only by batteries most capitalizes on the operating cost, noise and emissions benefits of electric propulsion, it also is most hampered by range limitations. Air traffic integration or any safety, and noise issues were not accounted in this study.

Aircraft sizing is a critical aspect of a system-level study because it is a prerequisite for most design and analysis activities, including those related to the internal layout as well as cost and system effectiveness analyses. The results of this study can be implemented to design a PAV.

This study can contribute to the establishment of innovative PAV concepts that can alleviate today’s transportation problems.

This study compared the sizing results of PAVs with hybrid engines with those having IC engines.

Social relationships play an important role in organizational entrepreneurship. They are crucial to entrepreneurs’ decisions because, despite the bleeding-edge technological advancements observed nowadays, entrepreneurs as human beings will always strive to be social. During the COVID-19 pandemic many companies moved activities into the virtual world and as a result offline Social relationships became rarer, but as it turns out, even more valuable, likewise, the inter-organizational cooperation enabling many companies to survive.

This chapter aims to develop knowledge about entrepreneurs’ SR and their links with inter-organizational cooperation. The results of an integrative systematic literature review show that the concept of Social relationships, although often investigated, lacks a clear definition, conceptualization, and operationalization. This chapter revealed a great diversity of definitions for Social relationships, including different scopes of meaning and levels of analysis. The authors identify 10 building blocks and nine sources of entrepreneurs’ Social relationships. The authors offer an original typology of Social relationships using 12 criteria. Interestingly, with regard to building blocks, besides those frequently considered such as trust, reciprocity and commitment, the authors also point to others more rarely and narrowly discussed, such as gratitude, satisfaction and affection. Similarly, the authors discuss the varied scope of sources, including workplace, family/friendship, past relationships, and ethnic or religious bonds. The findings of this study point to a variety of links between Social relationships and inter-organizational cooperation, including their positive and negative influences on one another. These links appear to be extremely dynamic, bi-directional and highly complex.

This paper presents an alternative approach to evaluating the overall efficiency and performance of Taiwanese container ports. Specifically, a parallel activity with series structure concept in the form of data envelopment analysis (MNDEA) is used to construct a model that applies to three different activities: harbor management, stevedoring and warehousing operations. We will further divide each activity into two process types, production processes and services processes. We will also adopt a Delphi survey approach and use the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to identify these processes’influence dependence and their degree of importance for the MNDEA model setting. An empirical application demonstrates the performance of Taiwanese container ports by using MNDEA with window analysis techniques via the directional distance functionThe results demonstrate that the application is effective in indicating and/or suggesting resource-adjustments, while considering which undesirable output levels and shared inputs were involved. The results also present directions for possible improvements in workplace efficiency.

This study examined the effectiveness of a 4.5-day service leadership program for students from Chinese universities using objective outcome evaluation. The participants were assessed before and after the program, with two post-test measurements (immediate assessment and assessment 12 days after the completion of class learning). At pretest and two posttest time points, the participants completed a questionnaire measuring positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, and life satisfaction. Results showed that students’ performance in both the immediate posttest and follow-up test was better than that in the pretest. Despite the limitations of the one-group pretest-posttest design, results suggest that the curricular-based service leadership program was effective to promote students’ positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, as well as life satisfaction, and the effectiveness maintained a short period after the class had ended. While the existing findings are promising, these findings should be replicated in the future.

This study investigates the effect of managerial ability on labor productivity by analyzing various methods in the firm-year panel data of listed firms in South Korea from 2002 to 2019. Managerial ability was analyzed using the measurement method of Demerjian et al. (2012), while labor productivity was analyzed using value-added and sales. The authors find that managerial ability has a positive effect on labor productivity. In other words, the productivity of employees improves with the appointment of a manager with higher abilities. The study’s findings suggest that firms should consider managerial ability as a means of improving labor productivity.

This paper comprehensively addresses the influence of chopped strand mat glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) patch configurations such as geometry, dimensions, position and the number of layers of patches, whether a single or double patch is used and how well debonding the area under the patch improves the strength of the cracked aluminum plates with different crack lengths.

Single-edge cracked aluminum specimens of 150 mm in length and 50 mm in width were tested using the tensile test. The cracked aluminum specimens were then repaired using GFRP patches with various configurations. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element method (FEM) was adopted to simulate the repaired cracked aluminum plates using composite patches to obtain the stress intensity factor (SIF). The numerical modeling and validation of ABAQUS software and the contour integral method for SIF calculations provide a valuable tool for further investigation and design optimization.

The width of the GFRP patches affected the efficiency of the rehabilitated cracked aluminum plate. Increasing patch width WP from 5 mm to 15 mm increases the peak load by 9.7 and 17.5%, respectively, if compared with the specimen without the patch. The efficiency of the GFRP patch in reducing the SIF increased as the number of layers increased, i.e. the maximum load was enhanced by 5%.

This study assessed repairing metallic structures using the chopped strand mat GFRP. Furthermore, it demonstrated the superiority of rectangular patches over semicircular ones, along with the benefit of using double patches for out-of-plane bending prevention and it emphasizes the detrimental effect of defects in the bonding area between the patch and the cracked component. This underlines the importance of proper surface preparation and bonding techniques for successful repair.