Taster Talks

Topics Available

Accounting and Finance

Accounting is about providing important and complex information and advice. Understanding accounts provides an insight into how financially successful a business is, allows for consideration ofways of funding a new business or the growth in an existing one. Having a clear grasp of accounting can also help to predict which new product is going to be the most profitable and create a profound understanding of what makes businesses successful and what can cause them to fail. This taster talk will cover some of the most challenging questions for modern businesses such as the importance of maintaining and developing trust and the conseqencies of betraying that trust; what is fraud, how does it happen and how can we minimise the risk of it happening? These are important considerations for any professional career, not just in Accounting and Finance.

Human Resource Management: Creative Workforce

Who is the creative worker and what do they bring to an organisation? Are they the innovative, imaginative, spontaneous, off- the-wall risk taker who persistently thinks 'outside the box' as has often been portrayed; or do they instead possess a balance of skills and personal attributes that enable them to channel their creative ability pragmatically? This taster talk will discuss the concept of creativity and the creative worker, using exercises to enhance student's own creativity.

Economics

Economics is about choice and is at the heart of decision making. Individuals, businesses and governments are all faced with making choices in situations where resources are scarce. As a result, economics is applicable to a wide range of fields including business, finance, administration, law, local and national governments and indeed most aspects of everyday life. This taster talk will introduce students to the main principles of economics. Increasingly, policy debate is being cast in economic terms, and an understanding of economics is crucial to analysing current issues such as Brexit, European Migrant and Refugee crisis, rising income inequality, and the rapidly changing climate. The relevance of this subject to both modern society and businesses operations will be introduced in this session.

Human Resource Management: Leading and Facilitating Change

Leading and facilitating change is about initiating and achieving the smooth implementation of new developments and initiatives by planning and introducing them systematically. Leading and facilitating change is probably the most demanding of all HR roles. This taster talk discusses how the process of change can be lead and managed successfully and provide students with an insight into their own attitudes towards change processes and how to manage resistance to change.

Global Logistics: Sea Blindness, or the Unreported Ocean

Britain is an island, historically a sea-faring nation. We have a proud past of exploring the oceans of the world, not always in the most friendly way. However, if you were to ask people in Britain these days how much of the things we buy came to Britain by sea, most people would get the answer very wrong. They would be unaware of the communities of people who spend much of their lives at sea, supplying us with the goods produced in the global economy. We all use the internet to buy things from all over the world: ebay, for example, is a gateway to a global market. The internet connects us with suppliers, but the shipping industry delivers on that contract. This taster talk introduces the topic of global maritime logistics, an industry that brings you the things that you use every day, the fuel that powers cars, buses and lorries, much of the food you eat and most of the clothes you wear, amongst so many other things. It is a fascinating story of a highly developed, very efficient global transport system; an important story that is so often unknown or taken for granted.

Human Resource Management: Motivating Employees

In the current economic climate motivation is a key concept for all businesses. Contemporary organisations are beginning to realize their main method of gaining competitive advantage is in their unique workforce. At the same time, employees are increasingly willing to take lower paid jobs to do a role that they enjoy in an environment that they feel comfortable within. This taster talk will use a cases-study approach to consider how organisations create a motivated and engaged workforce, discuss what fuels people's passion for their work and provide students with an insight into their own motivation preferences.

Business and Management: New Venture Creation

The aim of this session is look at how entrepreneurs develop the idea for a new business venture. It will include how to develop creativity and innovation and how to evaluate the opportunities. Topics included will be how to create a map to see if there are sufficient resources to implement the idea.

Business and Management: Strategy

Strategic management is a process involving creation, implementation and change, with a number of components. This taster talk will discuss the process of strategizing along with the purpose of strategy. Students will be giving insights into the resource based view of strategy (RBV).

International Tax and Tax Avoidance

Countries are concerned over flight of capital and savings from their jurisdictions to low or no tax jurisdictions- Tax Havens. Phenomenon has reached such proportions as to be considered harmful and is no longer a tolerated side effect of International Finance but a threat to the equilibrium of world economies. Trillions of dollars of personal wealth is held offshore by rich individuals and multinationals. This talk will look at some of the tax avoidance techniques that multinational companies utilise and will identify specific techniques that well established and well-known companies such as Google and Amazon make use of and how the tax authorities are dealing with these issues.

Human Resource Management: 'We' Versus 'I': The Importance of Teamwork

Leadership is often attributed to one individual, but a successful outcome is rarely achieved by one person alone. Instead, teamwork is crucial to organisational performance. A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they are mutually accountable (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). This taster talk discusses the performance and the role of individuals within a team, providing students with an insight into their own preferences, abilities and working style.

Tourism

Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world, with over 1 billion international tourists worldwide in 2016, and is very important to the Welsh economy. As a service industry it is very focused on providing experiences to people in a globally competitive marketplace. Whilst often seen as a 'smokeless industry', it has major economic, social and environmental impacts. This talk will discuss some of the principles and impacts behind managing tourism and its importance to Wales.