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Economies and societies are not digitally isolated. Digital technologies are widely recognised as key drivers of information dissemination, knowledge sharing, income and employment. Digital technologies also influence the interlinkages of digitalisation, gender and labour market outcomes. Digital technologies impact every sphere of day-to-day life. It impacts ways of communication, trade and business; influences networking abilities; shapes societal norms, attitudes and behaviours. It is hence argued that digital technologies may have crucial implications for women's participation in the workforce.

Gender equality and increasing women's workforce participation is an important goal under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Research indicates that women are mainly involved in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, while collar formal work, and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies significantly impact the ways of working in all these sectors. Consequently, it is argued that digital technologies influence women's participation across all such types of work.

This chapter aims at unravelling the linkages between digital technologies and women's workforce participation. To this end, the influences of digital technologies on women's participation in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, white-collar formal work and entrepreneurship are discussed. The implications and impacts of the use of broadband, internet and mobile technologies are also discussed. This chapter also includes important theories of women's workforce participation and discusses them in light of digitalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the interplay between selected consumer behavior constructs and their individual and joint influences on purchase intentions of global, local, and hybrid brands. This is a topic that is becoming increasingly important as the world moves toward global economic interdependence and increasingly more firms expand abroad.

As the paper is in its conceptual/modeling phase, its research design is not yet complete, nor does it offer any findings. Resting our work on attitude and identity theories, we derive hypotheses about the potential influence of consumer behavior constructs, that is, the levels of the consumer’s global consumption orientation, globalization attitude, consumer ethnocentrism, and consumer cosmopolitanism on global brand attitude and its influence on willingness to purchase global versus nonglobal brands. We also derive hypotheses about influences that might moderate this relationship; specifically the consumer’s affinity with the home country of the particular brand, and the perceived value embedded in the brand.

Our work will contribute to the expanding literature on global consumer culture and consumption patterns and will thus provide valuable insights for international marketing managers and for social policy.

Our work will examine the joint influences of several consumer behavior constructs on brand purchase behavior, in addition to the independent influences of these constructs. It will also explore the possible mediating influence of global brand attitude on purchase intentions and moderating effects, if any, of perceived value and consumer affinity on consumers’ choices of global over local and hybrid brands.

The United Nations (UN) adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); agenda 2030 focuses on Climate Action (goal 13), targeting climate adaptability, as well as resilience, awareness and improving policy mechanisms on climate change. In order to enhance climate adaptability, climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAP) is a necessary step. CSAP is a sustainable agriculture approach with a strong focus on climate dimensions. The three pillars of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) are ‘Adaptation’: adapting to climate change; ‘Resilience’: building resilience against it and ‘Remove’: reducing carbon emissions. The new world economy uses Industry 4.0 technologies for sustainable advancement, including blockchain technology, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality, industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and services. Hence, technology plays a significant role in climate sustainable agriculture practices. This chapter shall consider three technologies consisting of IoT, AI and blockchain technology which contribute to CSAP in pre-harvesting (monitoring climate as well as fertility status, soil testing, etc.), harvesting (tilling, fertilisation, seed operations, etc.) and post-harvesting (predicting weather factors, seed varieties, etc.) periods of agriculture. All these three technologies work like the human nervous system; IoT helps in converting various information regarding demography, climate change, local agricultural needs, etc. into world data; AI works like a brain in combination with IoT, helps predict the use of climate-smart technology and blockchain, the memory part of the nervous system which deals with supply-side and ensures traceability as well as transparency for consumers as well as farmers. Hence, this chapter shall contribute to the importance of these three technologies in adopting CSAP in three stages of agriculture.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the newest technology that is quickly advancing and can be utilised to improve human resource competence in the age of rapid digital transformation. The present competitive scenario demands accurate data that need to be collected and analysed for organisational growth.

Purpose: The research examines the applications and usage of AI in performance management and further analyses the future of PM from the perspectives of AI.

Methodology: The study is conceptual and relies on secondary data from research papers, publications, HR blogs, survey reports and other sources. Employee performance and attitudes were monitored using digital technologies, big data analytics and AI. The quality of employee performance continues to increase with the integration of AI, enabling predictive analytics to increase employee performance.

Research Implication: In employee performance appraisal, a digital performance management system leads to openness and honesty with time, effort and sincerity. It is based on the performance management system’s practical usefulness.

Theoretical Implication: The study’s findings provide HR managers, academics, IT professionals and practitioners with an understanding of how AI may be used for performance management and its consequences on their operations. In addition, the connection between the HR devolution theory on performance management and AI is discussed.

Pain is socially and culturally experienced. This chapter builds on previous research into the value of visual images for communicating pain in the UK, which evidenced ways in which images can improve doctor–patient interaction. It discusses ways in which photographs co-created with people living with chronic pain can be catalysts for discussion of pain and suffering in a range of cultural contexts, including higher education and healthcare training. We draw on a pilot project in Delhi, India where images were used as stimuli to dialogue and exploration of shared understanding of pain and current work in UK higher education using visual and other participatory methods. Students have a chance to work with and discuss images which depict qualities and characters of pain. Through seeing and hearing about patients’ experiences of pain, students learn about the commonalities and diversities in people’s experiences of their bodies and minds and how these impact on lives. As future health professionals, their own responses to this are important. Chronic pain can be a disabling condition leaving people vulnerable, with their sense of self and how they are seen by others threatened. People living with pain have to (re)negotiate their identity, with themselves and others, to see who they can be, as well as what they can do in this new state. Exploration of this through visual arts and verbal participatory activities can provide otherwise untapped insights and understandings of the human condition and its diversity. Exploring ways in which this approach could be extended to and adapted to other contexts are part of our future plans.