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Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the organisations in the form of increased job demands which manifested through increased workload, time pressure, etc. Similarly, stress and burnout engulfed the employees. Remote work became the new normal post-pandemic. Remote workers require more engagement. This has brought Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the forefront for engaging employees in the new normal.

Purpose: With limited studies on AI-enabled employee engagement in the new normal, this study investigates and proposes a conceptual framework of employee engagement in the context of AI and its impact on organisations.

Methodology: A systematic review and meta-synthesis method is undertaken. A systematic literature review assisted in critically analysing, synthesising, and mapping the extant literature by identifying the broad themes.

Findings: Since many organisations are turning to remote work post-pandemic and remote work requires more engagement, organisations are investing in AI to boost employee engagement in the new normal. Several antecedents of employee engagement such as quality of work life, diversity and inclusion, and communication are facilitated by AI. AI helps enhance the quality of work life by playing a major role in providing fair compensation, safe and healthy working conditions, immediate opportunity to use and develop human capacities, continued growth and security, work and total life space, and social relevance of work life. This has led to positive organisational outcomes like increased productivity, employee well-being, and decreased attrition rate. Furthermore, AI helps in measuring employee engagement. The various tools of AI, such as wearable technology, digital biomarker, neural network, data mining, data analytics, machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), etc., have gone a long way in engaging employees in the new normal.

The word witch conjures up a black-cloaked figure with a pointed hat flying on a broomstick, often with green skin and a hooked nose: the epitome of feminine evil. Although this version of witches was popularised in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and commercialised in mid-twentieth-century North American Halloween costumes, conjecture is that it originated from the slightly greenish hue of applying botanical remedies, or the appearance of witches who had endured bruising and painful torture. During the height of the European witch hunts (about 1450–1750, with the greatest intensity 1550–1650), an estimated 40,000–60,000 witches were executed (Levack, 1987). Although some men factored into this death toll, estimates are that 75–80% of witches executed were women (Gibbons, 1998). Fear and persecution of witches exists globally, dating to Ancient Rome, but the more systematic purges were the result of complex forces, including rapid social and economic changes of the Early Modern era, the Reformation, the Little Ice Age and the Plague (Federici, 2014; Golden, 2006). Those perceived as witches, often impoverished, older, single women, were easy scapegoats for society's ills.

In recent decades, the depth and accuracy of archival research into witch hysteria have improved. Drawing on this research, this chapter examines the place of witch persecutions in the contemporary context. Although people often recognise the injustice of these persecutions, few countries have granted legal pardons or erected memorials to their victims. Why is the acknowledgement of these injustices so slow coming? What fears about witches do we still harbour?

With the plethora of smart mobility innovations, their applications, and their pace of change, it is easy to get distracted by what these innovations can (potentially) do, rather than what we want or need them to do, if we are to meet our societal goals. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the extent to which smart mobility can help create policy change towards the goal of low carbon mobility. The concept of policy is broken down into its component parts, to outline the relationship between policy goals and policy instruments, and identifies the key tools underpinning policy instruments. In turn, the chapter situates policy instruments within an understanding of policy change and triggers for policy change, arguing there are two key ways in which transformative change can occur; exogenously and endogenously. The chapter argues that the onset of smart mobility does not suggest an exogenous shock to the current policy system, in which smart mobility disrupts the authority and beliefs inherent within the current policy approach to mobility. Smart mobility therefore in and of itself is unlikely to lead to a radical policy shift towards low carbon. However, in understanding smart mobility innovations as policy instruments, it is possible to envisage smart mobility incrementally changing policy towards low carbon mobility, if opportunities for reflexivity and learning are embedded within local policy contexts.

Studies on trajectory and trends of democratic growth frequently dominate scholarly debates. These studies are led by two distinct points of view. On the one hand, scholars believe that the prevalence of democracy is inevitable and thus marks an era of prosperity and of human rights. Such an era is dominated by the cultural values of independence, individuality, and freedom (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005) and leads to the end of the world's history and the end of the last man (Fukuyama, 1992; Mandelbaum, 2008). A contrasting point of view, on the other hand, is expressed by scholars who studied the crises of modern liberal democracies believing that democracies are failing and hence, the time of worldwide democratization is coming to an end (Mouffle, d’Angerville, 1994, The private life of Louise XIV. Cited in Thomas, Vagueness in law and language the concept of despotism. Oxford: Oxford University Press). This study adds to the ongoing debate by determining which of the trends prevails worldwide across the past two centuries and especially in the beginning of the 21st century. Moreover, it sheds light on existing knowledge about democratic paths and trends by suggesting that a comprehensive investigation of democratization processes requires both regional and worldwide analyses, and investigations of historical events and regional characteristic effects are more beneficial for long-term longitudinal studies.

Despite the massive social benefits that the car has brought, it has become evident that the current mobility system is undermining the benefits it creates with substantial air quality problems, inactive lifestyles, deaths and injuries from accidents and major contributions to the global climate change challenge. The introduction of smart mobility innovations, in promising to challenge the existing regime of automobility may be a major policy opportunity, and also provide a source of new economic opportunity. However, it is far from clear that these opportunities will be recognized or, even where they are, realized due to the complexities of steering any transition in the mobility system.

This book sets out how we should understand the challenge of governing the smart mobility transition and, in this introductory chapter we set out the key arguments and contributions of each part of the book for addressing these challenges. The first section of the book focuses on how the role of the government is challenged by the growing network of actors and the new resource interdependencies that emerge from smart mobility. How these challenges come to be recognized and resolved is itself a critical part of the governance process as explored in the second section. The third section examines the changing context of governance and the capacity of the state to act to steer the transition. This allows us to identify, in our final concluding section, a set of critical topics for those researching and implementing the smart mobility revolution.

In this special section of Political Power and Social Theory, we present the work of scholars from various disciplines documenting and analyzing the Obama phenomenon. The work in this section, including both theoretical and empirical analysis, is an early step in the much-needed academic discussion on Obama and racial politics in the contemporary United States. We offer this compendium as a call-to-arms to progressives and leftists, encouraging the revival of radical critique of Obama's discourse and policies instead of the fulsome praise or confused silence that has so far greeted Obama from the left.