Penny For Your Thoughts by Bangor Business School Bangor Business School

The UK is due to host the 67th Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday 13th of May on behalf of Ukraine. In the weeks leading up to the main event up to a quarter of a million visitors from throughout Europe and the UK are expected to descend upon Liverpool, where the competition will be hosted. 

In the lead up to the event the distinctive branding for the event; bright yellows, blues, and magenta can be seen throughout the city whilst city businesses and community groups offer a wide variety of Eurovision themed activities and workshops for tourists and the local community. 

This month Bangor Business School Penny for your Thoughts podcast series is joined by Dr Sonya Hana (Lecturer in Marketing) and Dr Linda Osti (Senior Lecturer in Tourism) to discuss how the Eurovision Song Contest is more than just a song competition; it is an increasingly important tourism and place marketing strategy.

The Covid-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressure on the social security system in Wales and across the UK and as a result, the past two years have seen unprecedented challenges. In this month’s Penny for your Thoughts podcast we explore one of the impact on (‘one of the factors impacting’ or ‘one of the impacts of Covid-19 on’?) the UK welfare system with Bangor Business School lecturer in accounting and taxation, Dr Sara Closs-Davies. We discuss the welfare and ‘work-fare’ systems and how accounting impacts the financial hardship of welfare recipients. Dr Closs-Davies puts forwards her expert views on whether the UK system is broken beyond repair. Is the current system working, or do we have to break a few more eggs to improve it? And if so which eggs do we break? Learn more about this complex issue by listening to the podcast here.

This month we are celebrating The Institute of Leadership and Management’s International Leadership Awareness Week which takes place on the 20th to 24th March. Dr Siwan Mitchelmore, Senior Lecturer at Bangor Business School takes a novel look at leadership focussing on ambidexterity. Ambidextrous leadership is useful for leaders' efficacy and improves workplace well-being. It is said to help leaders become better, more explorative and exploitative in their approach to leading. Let’s listen to Siwan to find out more about how leaders can generate confidence in their knowledge, skills and abilities to lead their employees through ambidexterity.

This month we are focussing our topic around World Cancer Day which is held every 4 February. World Cancer Day has grown into a positive movement for everyone, everywhere to unite. Each year, hundreds of activities and events take place around the world acting as a powerful reminder that we all have a role to play in reducing the global impact of cancer. As part of World Cancer Day, Bangor Business School’s Penny for your Thoughts podcast series is talking a look into understanding the role of risky consumption of well known carcinogens; including smoking and of course the concerning trend of vaping. Through a better understanding of consumer risky behaviours and the role that social marketing plays in communicating such risks to consumers, academics; such as our very own Dr Sara Parry, A Senior Lecturer in Marketing here at Bangor Business School,  are contributing a role in reducing the global impact of cancer.

Sara Parry is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bangor Business School.  Her research work has been published in many internationally recognised journals such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Behaviour and British Journal of Management. Sara is the Chair of Athena and the Equality and Diversity Representative for the School. She is also Head of Year 2 for all Bangor Business School undergraduates.

Dr Rhys ap Gwilym is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Bangor Business School and has been involved with a research project that has advised the Wales Assembly Government’s consultation into Wales’ Tourism Tax plans. We all know that tax can be complex and multi-layered! So how does a researcher go about unpacking a such complex issue? Let’s hear about Rhys’ research process, what he did and what he learned along the way to make understanding tourism tax less taxing!

Rhys has a strong interest in regional development policy and its role in Wales in particular. He has been a principal investigator on two grant-funded research projects for the Welsh Government relating to land value tax and tourism taxes. He is a member of the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ Economic Policy Group, where he has been involved in the development of discussion papers on the Welsh economy. He recently contributed to the “expert roundtable on the Welsh tax base & implications for public policy”.

In our very first Penny for Your Thoughts podcast Dr Steffan Thomas interviews Dr Heather He, Lecturer in Data Science/ Data Analytics at Bangor Business School. Dr Heather will be bringing some festive cheer, and rational thinking into what is known as ‘The Santa Claus Rally’. What is this phenomenon and how do we understand it through Behavioural Finance? Dr He has extensive research experience of individual trading behaviour and performance analysis in equity, forex exchange and cryptocurrency markets, as well as expertise in behavioural risk-taking and decision-making - prospect theory, individual behavioural biases, and decision theories.