Modernity and Decision-Making for Global Challenges

There are competing views on modernity. Some focus on the isolation of the individual, bereft of traditions and rituals, while others optimistically espouse the power of globalization, technology, and science to support progress and enhance human life. The challenges created by emerging diseases and human environmental impacts allow a new appreciation of the power of coordinated human responses while highlighting the limitations of globalization, technology, and science. Both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate that science and technology provide rapidly updated information, but immediate solutions reside in aggregate changes in personal behavior supported by regulation and governmental or trans-governmental agencies. These requirements for personal responsibility challenge individual powerlessness and highlight the necessity of communal responses to global challenges.

LABOR MARKET IN THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY: GLOBAL CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

The article studies theoretical approaches to the category of "postindustrial" economy ". The historical context of the development and transformation of the economic spheres of society has been determined. The author analyzes the macroeconomic indicators of the Republic of Belarus. The indicators of the labor market of the Republic of Belarus in the conditions of the post-industrial economy are analyzed. The article describes the main tendencies of the post-industrial economy at the present stage of the development of society. The characteristic of the labor market of the Republic of Belarus in the conditions of the development of the post-industrial economy is given. The challenges and prospects of the labor market in the post-industrial economy have been identified.

Project-Based Learning in Chemical Engineering

Solutions to global challenges need a range of engineers with diverse skills and attributes, and it is the responsibility of engineering educators to shape the engineering education landscape, using their problem-solving expertise to educate future engineers for modern technological advances. Project-based learning (PjBL) is an educational approach that can integrate such needed skills and attributes into the curriculum. However, delivering a truly effective PjBL approach can be quite difficult without considering a holistic approach encompassing three key pillars: PjBL curriculum and assessment, PjBL culture, and physical and online PjBL spaces. This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of how PjBL has been successfully deployed across the Chemical Engineering curriculum at the University of Nottingham, UK, through the lenses of those pillars, and in the form of design projects, with a progressive integration and development of diverse skills and competencies throughout the years.

Rising Global Challenges in Energy Demand and the Politics of Climate Change in Government Operations

While most governments subscribe to boosting global energy supplies since it paves the way for improved economies, which translates to better living conditions and gainful employments which in turn boost government operations, the rising global demand for energy from all human endeavors have activated unparalleled consequences on the environment, resulting to harmful repercussions for government operations and processes all over the world. Hence, scholars argue that the rising demand for global energy by industrialized nations have further increased the vulnerability of governments' operations and processes, especially in countries where these energy sources abound. Consequently, governments, multinationals, and various interest groups are divided on how best to address the quandaries resulting from rising global demand for energy and its effect on the environment and government operations. Recommendations that would enhance government operations were proposed.

The Influence of SHRM and Organizational Agility

This chapter reveals the significance of strategic human resource management (SHRM) as well as organizational agility (OA)and their impact on organizational performance that empowers organizations to achieve innovative excellence. As, nowadays organizational effectiveness is viewed as a prerequisite condition for upholding organizational performance, income and employment. Consistently, the essence of OA and importance of SHRM is considered as an eminent approach to meet the global challenges that enabling the effect of change in organizations and shielding employees against the unwanted effects. Thus, authors intention to investigate what makes an organization to be competitive? How the influence of SHRM and OA can really boost the organizational performance? To retort these queries, this chapter represents a conceptual perception of SHRM and OA that discuss the HRM strategies relation to OA. It also highlights the way organizations can respond rapidly and flexibly to cope up with the changing environment without facing business turmoil.

City Vertical Gardening

The countermeasures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic opened discussions regarding their status as temporal or ephemeral as they designated the positive environmental effects of the COVID-19 anthropause. The necessity to think about city transformation in times of environmental and health crises has revealed a number of digital tools and greening practices that might shape new policy and planning models to affront global challenges. Among these tools, a number of ‘urban acupuncture' activities have revealed the role of greening and gardening in urban spaces and how they assist in tackling challenges of environmental sustainability and city resilience. The authors investigate the contribution of vertical gardening (VG) as urban health enhancer and its prospects within smart city. They select and assess two case studies that integrate synergies between VG and machine learning (ML) approaches in an effort to showcase the tools' combined effect in realizing environmental control. These experiments imply hints for potential future research and implementation to broaden environments.