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This paper focuses on one vital consequence which is that future infrastructure maintenance cost per capita will increase. Using a sample of 23 developed countries, this paper looks at rail line maintenance cost per capita in the year 2020 versus rail line maintenance cost per capita in the year 2100. This analysis can be applied to most other infrastructure maintenance costs in the future.

However, this paper focuses on one vital consequence which is that future infrastructure maintenance cost per capita will increase. Using a sample of 23 developed countries, this paper looks at rail line maintenance cost per capita in the year 2020 versus rail line maintenance cost per capita in the year 2100. This analysis can be applied to most other infrastructure maintenance costs in the future.

The findings show that trail line maintenance costs per capita in the year 2100 will increase significantly for most developed countries.

This research shows the negative consequences of declining birth rates in a very vital and important area.

Despite declining birth rates and population decline in the future, many infrastructure systems still need to be maintained.

Maintaining the infrastructure will extract increasing amounts of vital national resources away from other societal concerns.

From an extensive literature review, very little, if any, has been written on this subject. Yet, this topic is highly important and will continue to get more focus in the future.

This thesis deeply studies the impact mechanism of digital service trade on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry from the aspects of technological innovation and industrial structure.

In this thesis, 40 countries from 2010 to 2020 were selected as samples, and the panel fixed-effect model and intermediary effect model were used to empirically analyze the impact path of digital service trade on the high-quality development of global manufacturing.

Overall, digital service trade has a positive impact on the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry. Through the analysis of the intermediary effect mechanism, it is found that digital service trade can further positively affect the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry by promoting technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading.

Based on the empirical results, targeted countermeasures and suggestions are given in this paper.

Through the test of national heterogeneity, it is found that in developing countries, digital service trade mainly acts on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry by promoting industrial structure upgrading.

In developed countries, digital service trade mainly promotes the high-quality development of manufacturing through technological innovation; from the perspective of industry heterogeneity, the three service industries of information and communication technology (ICT), other business services and property have the intermediary effect of technological innovation and industrial structure.

This manuscript suggests that trade in digital services should be promoted as a national trade priority.

The lessons of quality management apply to services as well as tangible goods. Awareness also has been increasing that services, like tangible goods, can be guaranteed as a means of implementing a total quality management (TQM) orientation in the organization. While higher education has been exploring some of the tenents of TQM, it has been slow to embrace the power of service guarantees. In this conceptual article we present a system of service guarantees designed to foster a TQM orientation in higher education. We propose that institutions consider a system of guarantees aimed at three primary constituent groups – students, faculty, and employers – over the short, medium and long term. The rationale and implications of the guarantee system are explored, and possible impediments are discussed.

Fiscal stress has forced Ohio local governments to pay increasing attention to the importance of revenue forecasting. This paper identifies and examines two Ohio local governments’ revenue forecasting approaches and forecasting accuracy using the case study method. It compares the differences in forecasting methods used. This research finds that informal forecasting methods are used by the county and formal forecasting methods are used by the city, that forecast accuracy varies by level of revenue aggregation using the informal method, and that depending on the revenue source, simple methods are more appropriate than complex methods.

The eternal question posed by students, “Why do I have to learn this?” is being answered for them every day in the newspapers and on television with respect to the balance of liberty and security in time of war. Teachers often express the need for focused materials that approach this question from both historical and modern perspectives, and this high-school lesson provides that. The Latin maxim, Inter arma enim silent leges, translated, “In time of war the laws are silent” expresses the doctrine that security trumps liberty in wartime, but in this lesson, student will ask, “Is liberty necessarily the price of security? How have United States governments justified the curtailment of liberty in wartime?” This lesson presents students and teachers with hands-on focus activities, student manipulatives and role-plays, and primary source document analyses that will lead students to appraise the cost of security and whether the Constitution can be preserved by being abridged.

The purpose of this study is to address the discrepancy between research that supports the service failure recovery and that which does not by examining customer satisfaction in the event of a service failure empirically.

The objective of the study was achieved by conducting role‐play experiments on undergraduate business students.

Analysis showed that a service recovery paradox is most likely to occur when the failure is not considered by the customer to be severe, the customer has had no prior failure with the firm, the cause of the failure was viewed as unstable by the customer, and the customer perceived that the company had little control over the cause of the failure.

This information should benefit service managers since service failures are common and typically trigger heightened customer attention. These findings may stimulate future research because the limitations of this study include the use of undergraduate business students and the examination of only one service setting. Nevertheless, this paper does demonstrate that, under the appropriate conditions, a customer can experience a paradoxical satisfaction increase after a service failure.

Two decades of research on municipal forecasting practice suggest that it is less advanced than other sectors. Moreover, local forecasters have a greater error tolerance than peers. Survey results of Florida’s finance directors provide evidence of why this is the case. Unlike other levels of government, local finance officials receive limited political or bureaucratic scrutiny that might induce more accurate forecasts. The judgmental approaches deployed facilitate the downside bias typically found in municipal forecast practice which fosters surplus building, per Wildavsky’s (1986) description of municipal budgeting. Absent greater senior management participation, it is unlikely municipal forecast practice will change. Findings also confirm that survey-based forecast research should account for respondents’ stated levels of accuracy and their “risk adjusted” perceptions that account for a preferred downside bias of one to seven percent.

Empirically evaluates a model of service guarantees by addressing the impact of a service guarantee on consumers’ satisfaction evaluations. Proposes a model suggesting that the differentiating and signaling properties of a guarantee can influence service provider satisfaction and that a service guarantee may capitalize on the coproduction nature of services to increase consumer self‐satisfaction and overall satisfaction. Finds empirical support that a guarantee can influence post‐consumption evaluations, even in the absence of service failure and the guarantee being invoked, and therefore suggests that a service guarantee may influence consumer satisfaction even if the service is already highly reliable.

In a technological era driven by coding, programming and artificial intelligence (AI), there is more need than ever to develop computing skills and knowledge for non-specialist students. Nonetheless, the literature on computer science teaching methods of non-scientific majors is not as comprehensive as that of scientific ones.

Pedagogically, the authors designed and implemented prototyping from John Dewey's pragmatic epistemological lens. Using a mixed methods approach, the authors tested the effectiveness and efficiency of this approach within the same course over four semesters across four academic years.

As an epistemological pedagogic device, prototyping facilitated learning by doing and experimenting and stimulated graduate students' self-directed learning, engagement and their overall ownership of the learning and teaching process, changing their role from being merely passive recipients of “strange, awkward and unfamiliar” knowledge to active constructors of “relevant and exciting” content knowledge. Such a change was reflected in the significant progress students made, driven by their commitment, motivation and enthusiasm, irrespective of their prior knowledge and age (Generations X, Y and Z). Prototyping also served as an avenue for a “Deweyian Reflection”, where graduate students, after internalizing the acquired computing skills and knowledge, started transferring such skills and knowledge to their professions (journalism and public relations (PR)) and daily practices.

Findings from this study will add to the literature review on this subject matter and will inform future case studies in computer science education for graduate students from non-scientific backgrounds.

This paper reveals that learning by doing/experimenting needs to be accompanied by in-depth reflection to enable students to transfer the acquired knowledge and skills to other settings and contexts beyond that of the lesson, task, or project in hand.

There is little research published on introductory programming courses offered to non-specialized students (i.e. students from non-scientific backgrounds). This study contributes to the body of research on how to effectively engage these students in programming courses informed by John Dewey's pragmatic lens/epistemological lens.