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Purpose: This chapter aims to study the issue of technological inequality in the modern world economy from the position of assessment of the scale of global conflict and the scenario of its development depending on conflict management.

Design/methodology/approach: The performed review of literature sources has shown that they provide an insufficient scientific basis for determining the level of technological inequality in the modern world economy from the position of assessment of the scale of the global conflict and scenarios of its development depending on conflict management. To fill this gap in the system of scientific knowledge, we use the method of comparative and correlation analysis of statistical data. The research objects are China and the United States, as well as other countries of the world that have the highest level of technological development, trade, and digitalization.

Findings: This chapter provides a review of factors that determine scientific arguments in favour of technological inequality of countries, which leads to a global conflict. Many forms of inequality have a socio-economic character and are connected to access to the main services (healthcare, education, or accommodation), as well as incomes and access to the sources of income, especially in the sphere of employment. The deficit of decent work and inequality turned the COVID-19 pandemic from the crisis of public healthcare into the crisis of employment and social conflict, which influenced the subsistence of millions of employees. There is a real risk that without comprehensive and well-coordinated political actions, the increase in inequality and reduction of general progress in the labour sphere will be preserved in many dimensions. There’s a need for the measures of international policy to provide developing countries with access to vaccines and financial support, including through restructuring of debts.

Originality/value: It is proved that after the creation of the UN, the nature of conflicts and violence underwent serious changes. Conflicts take fewer human lives but last longer, and the frequency of conflicts between groups within a country is higher than the frequency of international conflicts. In certain parts of the world, crimes on a gender basis are increasing in numbers. Besides, technologies allow using robots, drones, cyberattacks, viruses, and hackers for military purposes. At the same time, international cooperation is weak, similar to the global ability to prevent and regulate conflicts and all possible forms of violence. Technological progress changes the character of the development of conflicts. Achievements in the sphere of AI and machine learning will play an important role in this process of transformation, so the character of threats from the government and non-government subjects will change. The use of AI raises the precision of cyberattacks and physical and biological attacks, making the identification of attackers very difficult.

Roles of academic libraries have recently been regularly discussed among Library and Information Science (LIS) scientists and practitioners. A shift of roles induced by various factors forces academic libraries to reconsider their operational guidelines and plan future scenarios. This article provides an analysis of the framing of roles assumed by academic libraries and identifies key factors and agents that influence the process. Research consisted of an analysis of official strategic documents of Lithuanian state-owned universities that are of great importance to the strategic development of academic libraries and the anchoring of their roles. Applying Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory and the concepts of new institutionalism as a theoretical approach, key factors and agents influential to the role of academic libraries were identified. Modernity, market, and quality as three interrelated discourses highlight the proposition that modernity is inseparable from the development of information technologies and infrastructure and that various professional networks in the library environment act as powerful institutional agents. Practices of market law application in universities have influence on the institutional logic of libraries which increasingly relies on the criteria of efficiency and rationality.

The last few years have witnessed massive artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming adoption that has navigated the emerging markets. Moreover, according to the WOG summit (world government summit report, by Nielsen) 2020 reports, AI with gaming mechanisms are expected to enrich marketing services in the coming future in the emerging markets. Countries such as India, China and South Korea contribute significantly to this area, and recent forecasting allows the need to increase in emerging markets. Similarly, these countries have a maximum number of youth gamers and AI-driven technology adopters. The adoption of AI-driven technologies and amplification of gamification in marketing services are new phenomena. Moreover, gaming and AI dynamics are relatively new in emerging countries and need greater attention. Thus, this book chapter proposes a dyad model that would explain users' and companies' perspectives to understand the role of AI and gamification for the emerging markets. The chapter will explain how AI-driven gamification helps the users of emerging markets. The chapter will also illustrate how companies in emerging markets use AI for gamification. Therefore, the dyad model would also comprehend the gap, opportunities and challenges in this area and the subsequent strategies to help all the stakeholders.

Even though it has already been 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining of independence for the Republic of Latvia, teacher education faces various and specific problems brought forth by the experience behind the ‘iron curtain’, spanning five decades. Ever since regaining its independence, Latvia has implemented ambitious education reforms. A new education reform has been launched in Latvia, which start to implement the competency approach in general education by 2018. A vital aspect of this reform is teacher education. In preparing teachers, universities have an extra task – to promote competency of the future teachers to implement the competency approach in schools, in a student-centred study process. The organisation process must change during the university study process in order to accommodate that the future teachers acquire actual competencies by using modern technologies and modern learning strategies, thus later promoting active involvement of students in the construction of their competencies.

This study carried out a survey of 170 students of the teacher education programme at the University of Latvia and revealed problem areas that should be changed in the teacher education process to ensure that the future teachers are able to implement the competency approach in schools. IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used to analyse data. The research objective was to learn student-teachers’ ability to implement competency approach in their pedagogical work.

Purpose: This paper presents a review of the current state and potential capabilities for application of robots, artificial intelligence and automated services (RAISA) in hotel companies.

Design/methodology/approach: A two-step approach was applied in this study. First, the authors make a theoretical overview of the robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in hotels. Second, the authors make a detailed overview of various case studies from global hotel practice.

Findings: The application of RAISA in hotel companies is examined in connection with the impact that technology has on guest experience during each of the five stages of the guest cycle: pre-arrival, arrival, stay, departure, assessment.

Research implications: Its implications can be searched with respect to future research. It deals with topics such as how different generations (guests and employees) perceive RAISA in the hotel industry and what is the attitude of guests in different categories of hotels (luxury and economy) towards the use of RAISA. It also shows what is the attitude of different types of tourists (holiday, business, health, cultural, etc.) and what kinds of robots (androids or machines) are more appropriate for different types of hotel operations.

Practical implications: The implications are related to the improvement of operations and operational management, marketing and sales, enhancement of customer experience and service innovation, training and management.

Originality/value: This book chapter complements and expands research on the role of RAISA in the hotel industry and makes some projections about the use of technologies in the future.

This chapter explores the interaction between different kinds of knowledge and representations in the making of the ‘fleshed’ female reproductive body in an Indian city. In particular, it analyzes how women perceive contraception and how the reproductive governance helped to produce the female sterilization as the most widely used contraceptive method in India. The study is based on the case of the city of Bhuj, in the state of Gujarat (India), where three anthropological fieldworks (15 months) were conducted. Modern contraceptive methods are based on a biomedical representation of the body, drawn from Western categories of knowledge and experience, whereas women live the ‘fleshed’ reproductive body through local categories of substance and fluids. How is this knowledge mobilized and affected in relation to reproductive technologies and the government of reproduction? This question is addressed through the analysis of women's embodied experiences of contraception. The narratives collected show a resistance to biomedicine, considered to be a model that alters the female body and its reproductive capacity. Nevertheless, even when sterilization was considered to be a deliberate act of tampering with the functioning of their bodies, women displayed a pragmatic agency in choosing this method. The experiences of respondents reflected complex negotiations between bodily suffering, socio-economic structures and the microphysics of power surrounding them, rather than a unilateral submission to medical authority and reproductive governance.

The chapter considers the significance of the oil and gas industry for the Russian economy. The authors analyze the current state of the oil and gas industry, their specific weight in the structure of Russian GDP, and tax revenues from this industry to the Russian budget that was estimated. We give scenario analysis that considers the problems that the Russian economy may face because of the sanctions, the price fluctuations at the commodity market, and the crisis phenomena in the world economy. The chapter points out that localization of technology production and development of technologies for offshore oil and gas production in the Arctic zone may become an incentive to further ensure import substitution for Russia. At present, the experience of Arctic defense enterprises in the production of equipment for oil and gas production and processing is becoming increasingly popular. The chapter elaborates the most significant examples of the creation of new industries in the Arctic zone, the prospects of seismic exploration on the Arctic shelf, and that localization of production capacities and service bases will allow obtaining a multiplicative incentive for a qualitatively new industrial and infrastructure development of the northern territories. Also, we provide an assessment of the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, which makes economically attractive use of natural gas on a regional level as LNG opens the way to fuel high-power needs and to long-distance transport.