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The purpose of this paper is to illuminate from the perspective of an older person (Harriet) the factors that support and jeopardise mental well-being in the fourth age.

The paper is based on unstructured narrative interviews with an older woman who was originally interviewed for a previous research study 15 years ago. At that time she was aged 82; she is now aged 97. This paper explores themes of change and continuity in her experience of ageing with a view to re-evaluating the model of sustaining the self-developed in the earlier study and comparing the findings with current conceptions of the fourth age.

Harriet’s previous efforts to remain independent have been replaced by an acceptance of dependency and diminished social relationships and activity. However, she retains significant threads of continuity with her earlier life and employs cognitive strategies that enable contentment. Her experience of advanced old age fits conceptions of neither the third nor fourth age, indicating the need for more sophisticated and nuanced understandings.

The paper is original in exploring the lived experience of someone in advanced age across a 15 year time period. Its value lies in rendering visible the factors that have promoted and/or undermined her mental well-being and in generating insights that can be applied more generally to experiences of advanced age.

To better understand the social nature of dementia, it is important to understand its cultural significance and the role that it plays in re-articulating later life. In this new terrain of ageing it may be worth exploring how the idea of the fourth age can help us better understand the nature of dementia and the way in which its cultural role affects both social and health policies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Gilleard and Higgs (2010) argue that the fourth age now serves as a “cultural imaginary” of the deepest and darkest aspects of old age and that dementia figures prominently in fashioning it.

The scope for exploring dementia as a component of the cultural imaginary of the fourth age has already been demonstrated through the small but growing number of studies that have explored the fear of dementia.

An avenue for further exploration is the distinction between a fear of losing one's mind (as in the pre-modern meaning of dementia) and the fear of losing one's place (as in the loss of status associated with dependency). Arguably the former exercises a greater influence than the latter, and raises the question of distinguishing between narratives and practices that sustain the mind of the person with dementia and those that sustain the position of the person with dementia as fellow citizen or fellow countryman or woman.

This article is based on a small‐scale study into a tai chi class for older people at risk of falling. The aims of the research were first, to explore what benefits the class members felt they derived from practising tai chi and second, and more specifically, whether or not the class members actually practised tai chi at home. The study was based on two broad assumptions. The first being that the practice of tai chi has benefits for older people at risk of falling. The second assumption being that, such benefits that might result from tai chi, increase with more frequent practice. The latter assumption prompted the desire to investigate whether the class members practised tai chi at home. It was hoped that if it was discovered that class members derived benefits from tai chi, and were, for whatever reason, prevented from practising at home, that some solutions could be found in order to facilitate further practice.The research revealed, somewhat surprisingly, that the members did not believe that tai chi had necessarily reduced their risk of falling. However, notwithstanding this, their commitment to tai chi was very strong. The findings suggest that tai chi had a symbolic value for this predominantly middle‐class group. It allowed them to ‘buy into’ a third age lifestyle, despite increasing intimations of entering the fourth age. The members used tai chi, not only to improve balance and fitness, but also as a means of achieving a positive self‐image. It was therefore an age‐resisting strategy that operated on both a physical and symbolic level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current policy of extending personal budgets to older people.

In developing this explanation, the paper draws upon a species of de-centred, post-foundationalist theory which draws attention to the way in which certain narratives can sustain a longing for the implementation of policies that are ultimately unachievable. The paper also draws upon original data from an evaluation of a national ageing charity’s project to increase take-up of personal budgets.

The paper draws attention to, and seeks to explain, the paradoxical discursive positioning of older adults as “the unexceptional exception” within the general narrative of universal personalisation.

This analytical approach can secure a different vantage point in this debate by paying closer attention to the ideological and ethical dimensions of personalisation than has been the case until now.

The paper contributes to the critical interrogation of the personalisation agenda, in which debate (both in academic and practitioner circles) has become highly polarised.

The paper contributes to discussions in critical social gerontology which point to a bifurcation of later life into, on the one hand, an ageless third age and a frailed fourth age, on the other.

The paper makes clear that the discursive positioning of older people as “the unexceptional exception” risks an inadvertent ageism.

Industry 4.0 is a term for the so-called Fourth Industrial revolutions. It is the technological integration of cyber-physical systems (CPS) in the process of production. CPS enables internet-based process networking with all participants in the process of value creation. The industrial revolution is actually changing how we live, work and communicate. Many trades have highly been affected by 4IR, libraries are one of them. The libraries of twenty-first century are shifting their paradigms from traditional setup to modern information networking. As people and machines are connecting to each other at enormous speed, artificial intelligence, mobile computing, machine learning and automation of every trade have become a need of the day. Automation and artificial intelligence are change agents in 4IR that will make certain groups of employees redundant, replacing them with new workers with the needed skills or with machines that do the job cheaper. This paper aims to shed light on how the 4IR will “shape the future of education, gender, work and library services”. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges being faced by the library and librarians in the age of Industrial 4.0 revolution in contemporary society. The purpose of this study is to review the past literature on Industrial Revolutions 4.0 in education and interlink them with Library services.

The current study performs a systematic and content-centric review of literature relevant to library services. The literature of this study is based on a six-stage approach to identify the design principles and technology trends of 4IR in education and Library services.

Industry 4.0 Revolution is the current trend of revolutionary technology, which has affected many services in this age of globalization. Similar, Library services have highly been affected by 4IR. An effort has been made to highlight the vari-ous challenges being faced by libraries and librarians in this age of information. Some solutions have been presented to the library professionals to overcome this technology to boost its services up to the entire satisfaction of the patrons.

The strategic approach in this study can serve the academicians and practitioners in the field of librarianship as a stepping stone to develop a successful transition from traditional manufacturing into the industry 4.0.

The study is among the first to identify the challenges being faced by libraries and librarians in this age of Industrial revolutions.

US corporations are now sitting on an enormous stockpile of cash. Instead of investing their resources and creating jobs, the firms are holding on to excess cash. Academicians and practitioners alike have tried to fathom the reasons why companies are holding on to so much cash. Numerous studies have talked about the various motives for holding cash. Many researchers have tried to correlate excess cash holding with particular firm characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to study the correlations that exist between excess cash holding and some measurable managerial characteristics.

Four different measures of managerial horizon (MH) were constructed. The first two constructs (MH1 and MH2) are based on the CEO’s age and how long he has been the CEO of the company. The next two constructs (MH3 and MH4) are based on compensation, proportion of current compensation and proportion of future compensation. This paper tries to examine if MH has any impact on excess cash holding.

The results clearly show that the CEO age and the proportion of CEO’s compensation (current and future) do determine level of cash holding in the company. Younger CEOs hold more cash compared to older CEOs. Older CEOs hold less cash suggesting that as CEOs grow older they might be motivated by the idea of leaving a long lasting legacy. CEOs who receive more of their compensation in future payments also hold on to more cash, whereas CEOs who receive more of their compensation in current payments hold less cash.

There is no previous literature dealing with MH and cash holding by corporations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how discourse theories can contribute to the concept of identity formation within a patient- or person-centered care (PCC) orientation, to enable more critical engagement with PCC in older people.

This is a conceptual paper.

This paper concludes that the discourse literature has important insights for understanding identity formation in older people as operationalized in the context of PCC in three particular ways: accounting for multiplicity in patients’ identity; exploring “the devolution of responsibility” to address shifts in performing identities in clinical encounters; and attending to a “crisis of positioning” to engage empowerment discourse within a PCC philosophy.

Whilst a notion of patient identity is at the heart of PCC, the concept remains inconsistent and underdeveloped. This is particularly problematic for the quality of care in older adults, as PCC has become increasingly synonymous with care of older people. Discourse theories of identity formation can be used to critically engage with identity within the context of PCC, so as to develop more nuanced understandings of “the person” or “the patient,” with the potential to improve research into care for aging and older adults.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of maturation processes – personality change and reflectivity as characterized by greater awareness to self and others – during emerging adulthood in predicting career success.

A sample of 205 of Israeli emerging adults was followed over a 12-year period. Participants completed measures of self-criticism at age 23 and 29, reflectivity at the age of 29 and subjective and objective career outcomes such as satisfaction with work and level of income at the age of 35. Hierarchical regressions determined the extent that decreases in self-criticism as well as greater reflectivity that predicted future career success.

The findings of this paper indicated that greater decreases in self-criticism were longitudinally associated with less frequent negative experiences at work and lesser tendency to have doubts about one’s career. Greater reflective capacity was longitudinally associated with a future higher income, greater career satisfaction and a stronger perception of one’s career as a means to implement inner interests.

The results of this paper suggest that decreasing negative self-perception and enhancing awareness about self and others might facilitate a future career success.

This is among the first studies that demonstrate the role of personality maturation during emerging adulthood for future career success.

In this chapter, we have focused on system processing through incoming data and big data and system analysis after data processing and clustering and then intelligent decision-making that can be driven and done entirely through an Internet of Thing (IoT), AI, BI and the future of fourth technologies, so this new and fast processing has direct effect in consumers choices. Based on the 5th wave and i-Sustainability Plus and DCT (Doost Cultural Theroy) theories, SME 5.0/Hybrid SMEs/Tomorrow's SMEs concept, seven pillars of sustainability (7PS) model, nine pillars of sustainable governance (9PSG) model, 3D soci-eco-environment SME model and the related theories, models and concepts which has been invented, introduced and developed by Hamid Doost Mohammadian 2010–2017, to name examples, a new idea of tomorrow's SMEs, the associated theories, models and concepts, it can be assumed that a thriving Industry 4.0 implementation can take place with this comprehensive tool and method kit. The next technical-technological level represents a barrier, whether in the 5th wave theory simply called ‘Industry 5.0’ or made hardly more tangible with artificial intelligence and hyper-networking. Hybrid forms of work, with known forms of online/offline communication, are expanded with communication interfaces that support people not involved but directly and indirectly affected.

Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) technologies have strong potential to affect consumer well-being, positively or negatively, so the current paper aims to review potential opportunities and threats that these technologies represent for consumers in several core economic sectors: health care, education, financial services, manufacturing and retailing.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for how IR 4.0 technologies affect consumer well-being in five representative sectors: health care, education, financial services, manufacturing and retailing. The authors argue that the potential transformations of these specific sectors, facilitated by these technologies, may have profound effects on consumer well-being, with urgent public policy implications.

Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, three-dimensional printing, machine learning and blockchain, provide customers with novel approaches toward decisions regarding health, education, finances and other fundamental parts of their lives. The organizations that provide these services, such as hospitals, universities and banks, actively adopt the innovations offered by IR 4.0. These evolving and disruptive technologies thus are changing reality for consumers and providers.

This paper proposes some novel public policy implications of IR 4.0 technologies for consumer well-being, and it outlines further research directions that can enhance understanding of relevant technologies and the consequences of their use for society.