This chapter critically examines trust-based leadership (TBL), arguing that its core principles – trust, empowerment, and autonomy – function within a managerialist framework to reproduce, rather than redress, asymmetrical power relations between managers and workers. Drawing on Scandinavian reform examples and contemporary studies, the chapter presents TBL as a managerialist concept. It shows that trust, empowerment, and autonomy are typically granted conditionally by managers, constrained by managerial definitions of ‘trustworthy’ behaviour and bounded by strategic and administrative prerogatives. Rather than realising workplace democracy or redistributing authority, TBL often consolidates managerial discretion, produces an illusion of participation, and reframes worker agency as something to be authorised. The ‘dark side’ of TBL therefore lies not in implementation failures but in the principles themselves as deployed within managerialism: they normalise managerial authority while obscuring the political dimension of labour, agency, and collective governance.

Chapter 12 discusses ethics and aged care, with a special focus on how nurses can support the autonomy of elderly people. Although it is often believed that an older person’s autonomy begins to deteriorate as the processes of biological decline affects their mobility and mental acuity, it is more often the negative attitudes of other people that show up early and that initially constrain an older person’s freedom. This chapter begins with an alarmingly commonly reported experience of being treated as senile or invisible simply by virtue of looking older. It is usually much later that physical and/or mental decline manifests. While ethical issues such as assisted dying (previously called ‘euthanasia’) tend to capture the public imagination, it is at the level of everyday living that nurses can often have the most profound impact on the lives of older people experiencing physical and/or mental decline. It is at this level too that the dangers (and complexities) of elder abuse typically manifest. The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in providing companionship, engagement and even care for people living in aged care facilities is also touched upon.

Chapter 1 provides an overall introduction to the book and its underlying motivations. It proposes and defines the concept of Clever Computing. It presents the historical emergence of the Internet of Things, AI, and Ubiquitous Computing, and analyses the risks of technological visions of the future which often neglect current social and human needs in favour of techno-led solutions. It explores the need to account for human needs in design and, by extension, legal values. The term Clever Computing is contextualised by exploring different examples of how AI and IoT are increasingly converging. This focuses on the ways AI is changing and improving interaction techniques with IoT; how AI is being used to make sense of IoT data and enabling distributed data analysis; and how AI is augmenting the existing functionality and increasing the autonomy of IoT systems.

Shared decision-making (SDM) offers a model for prescribers and patients to arrive at treatment decisions in a collaborative way. SDM in psychiatry holds out the promise to better honor our patients’ autonomy in a field which historically has failed to honor or has even oppressed it. At the same time, psychiatric prescribers who incorporate SDM in their practices should not forget their crucial roles as educators and advisers, especially for patients whose decision-making may be compromised. In this chapter, we will review the core principles of SDM as they apply to psychiatric prescribing, discuss potential benefits and pitfalls, and provide vignette examples of SDM in practice.

The perspective that a patient has about treatment, especially when it comes to medication, is often very different from that of the psychiatric provider. Providers and patients alike may find it difficult to acknowledge and reconcile these divergences in their perspectives, leading to stuck points and potentially unhelpful or contentious dynamics in treatment. In this chapter, we explore some common types and sources of divergence, as well as some practical steps both providers and patients can take to understand and perhaps remedy them.

Written as a first-person narrative, this chapter draws upon personal experience to present critical perspectives of the consumer movement, with an emphasis on Human Rights, a person-centered approach to treatment, a goal of establishing mutual trust and responsibility, and shared decision-making.

This introduction begins by explaining the volume’s starting point: Traditional assumptions concerning Beethoven as an “enlightened” composer rest on an overly simplistic conception of the Enlightenment emphasizing secular humanism and political liberalism. This conception has been called into question in much historical scholarship on the Enlightenment over the past few decades, which has created a more pluriform view of the Enlightenment as encompassing different outlooks on issues such as politics and religion that were often in tension with one another. The goal of the volume is thus to invite a diverse group of scholars to consider the implications of new perspectives on the Enlightenment for our understanding of Beethoven’s life and music. The introduction briefly summarizes the various contributions in each of the volume’s three sections. The first section concerns Enlightenment historiography and its impact on established narratives in Beethoven reception. The other two sections focus on Beethoven’s life in Bonn and Vienna respectively. A number of common themes connect several different chapters with each other: religion, politics, social life, and material culture. The introduction concludes by clarifying that the volume does not seek to overthrow entirely the received wisdom concerning Beethoven and the Enlightenment, but to introduce more nuance and complexity in the way this issue is treated.

This chapter examines how state neutrality can be assessed by reference to the provision of certain information, with a particular focus on information provided through prenatal testing programmes. The information that parents receive about prenatal tests and procedures, and about disability, can be powerfully influential, and can shape the choices that are made. The chapter reviews a number of reasons why the provision of information might not reflect a neutral position: the information might be overly negative about disability, for example, and there is a risk that women will be blamed for any choice that they make. Although it must be acknowledged that it is not possible to have an entirely neutral framework, the chapter compares and evaluates different options that are thought to support autonomy. The chapter also considers nudge theory in order to critically assess both the state’s intention and some limits to individual choice. Although many of these limits are ones that the state cannot entirely avoid, it is important to consider how they put the parents in a particularly vulnerable position, where there is a risk of manipulation.

This chapter examines some further difficulties in interpreting the meaning of state neutrality in the context of prenatal selection practices, and that are tied to the state’s approach to disability. A first set of difficulties relates to the challenging or impossible task of identifying a value-neutral definition or concept of disability. If such a definition cannot be found, it is certainly hard to see how the liberal and neutral state can act, although a review of liberal commitments can indicate that certain approaches are more neutral than others. A second set of difficulties is associated with the fact that many parents of disabled children feel that some of their most important values change after their child is born, though they could not have anticipated or understood this change in advance. This common experience, which could be a type of transformative experience, suggests that prospective parents might not be able to make an entirely rational and informed choice, and that the state’s supposed support for autonomy might need some qualification.

Chapter 6 focuses on Iran’s thirteen minority ethno-nations. These nations differ from the ethno-nation formed by Iran’s ruling Persians (who are discussed in other chapters). These minority ethno-nations differ from one another but also share some features. Their affiliates, social organizations, leaderships, and cultural systems vary but they all provide structure and meaning for adherents in ways that are often lacking for other citizens. Many affiliates of minority ethno-nations do not identify as Iranians. Undergoing discrimination and persecution in Iran, they respond by enhancing their distinctive groupings and furthering their internal cohesion. Iran’s minority peoples formed political coalitions outside Iran, in their pursuit to oust the theocracy, form a secular democracy, and improve conditions for Iranians of all ethnicities. Most affiliates of these movements support a pluralist federal Iran in which communities could achieve regional autonomy. Some affiliates consider separating from Iran and joining their compatriots in adjoining countries. A few of them advocate for independence as new nation-states, just as the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union had done in 1991.

The primary threat of AI is not a dystopian uprising, but the quiet, rational surrender of human autonomy for convenience. While existing risks like discrimination and disinformation are concerning, another profound danger is one we willingly embrace: a life optimized by AI. As we delegate increasingly consequential decisions – from career paths to personal relationships – to demonstrably superior AI systems, we become meat puppets, happier and healthier, yet stripped of meaningful agency. The chapter argues that this philosophical loss, driven by the competitive pressure to optimize our lives, likely cannot be curbed by regulation and will be the defining, irreversible tragedy of the AI age.