Tax on alcohol is all wrong - I’ll drink to that

Dr Jonathan Seaton conducts research in the area of business economics focusing on supermarket price competition, sugary soda pricing and the impact of taxation on the price of alcoholic drinks. He is part of a team of internationally renowned researchers at UEA, Warwick and Sheffield who together have won grants totaling £1.5m from the medical research council and the ESRC. In this brief, Jon discusses the issues behind some of his recent research on one of Britain’s favorite addictive drugs – alcohol – and how we can achieve the right balance of a highly profitable export-led industry with the hard fact that many people die because of their overconsumption of it

Factors affecting employees' knowledge-sharing behaviour in the virtual organisation from the perspectives of well-being and organisational behaviour

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Drawing on the concept of organisational behaviour, this research augments the concepts of social capital theory and organisational culture with one pioneering precursor and mediator, the sense of well-being, to develop an integrative understanding of the factors affecting individuals' knowledge-sharing behaviour within the more complex context of the virtual organisation of Taiwanese Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs). A field survey of 131 employees from the selected virtual organisation was analysed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the outcomes empirically. Our research offers a persuasive body of evidence supporting the notion that increasing employees' sense of well-being can successfully form a bridge that can connect social capital tendency, organisational culture and employees' knowledge-sharing behaviour. Surprisingly, and contrary to common belief, the integrated model shows that social capital tendency seems to play a more important role than organisational culture in affecting employees' sense of well-being within the virtual organisation in a Chinese cultural context. Consequently, this research reveals the subtle interplay of employees' sense of well-being, social capital tendency, organisational culture and knowledge-sharing behaviour, while the in-depth analysis provides strong support for knowledge management research and practice

Is a good worker a happy worker?: Solving the productivity puzzle

There is much confusion among analysts about the true causes of productivity and growth within economies – post credit crunch that debate has only intensified. However, there is little doubt that a well-informed, innovative, flexible and unhampered small business sector is vital to this process. Meanwhile, the recent fear of a ‘hard’ Brexit has raised awareness that we are poorly equipped to sustain our present food consumption levels through domestic agricultural output alone

Pricing in inflationary times: The penny drops

© 2015 The Authors. How does the frequency and magnitude of micro-price rises and falls relate to macroeconomic crisis, as well as moderation? Weekly micropricing behaviour in British groceries was investigated across three leading retailers over the moderation period 2004-7 and the crisis period 2008-10. We find significant price flexibility sharply distinguished from behaviour observed in most previous works. Downward price flexibility increased markedly in 2008. Overall basket prices rise, but significantly more individual prices fall than rise in the latter period. Tests of obfuscation in price setting suggested that large numbers of small price falls were used to disguise the basket price rises