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Professional classical singing requires dedication and a significant amount of practice in order to properly sing the challenging pieces. Classical singers not only practice to become an expert in their techniques but also must understand the context, emotions and delivery of each musical piece. Acoustics of practice rooms are crucial as the singers spend most of their learning process in these rooms. Previous research on singers’ voice focused on the voice and vocal health issues. This allowed improved treatments and techniques in the clinical practice for singers’ vocal health. However, little research has been undertaken on how room acoustics affect the voice dosimetry and perception of classical singers. This research examines singers’ objective vocal dosimetry and subjective perception data together with the room acoustic parameters with an aim to find the preferred practice room conditions of the Opera singers. Singers are known to be professional voice users which are a group at risk from voice disorders. Therefore improving their singing environment for their vocal health is as necessary as the improvement of clinical practice. This research aims to find out the effect of the room environment on the vocal loading parameters and subjective parameters of the Opera singers with a focus on the practice rooms then to find out singers’ preferred practicing conditions to suggest target values for the room parameters that show correlation with the singers’ parameters. For this purpose, research was undertaken with the kind assistance of 117 Opera singers. First a pilot study was conducted in the Acoustic Laboratories of the London South Bank University in order to determine and validate the methodology of the research, second a Field study in the practice rooms of the Royal Academy of Music was conducted with an aim to find the relationship between singers’ data regarding their vocal dose parameters, perception and preferences of the acoustics of the practice rooms and thirdly, as a side study of the research, to find out Opera singers’ daily vocal load during a typical working day in order to make a comparison with daily vocal loading of professional voice users. It was found that there was no significant change in the Opera singers’ vocal loading in the laboratory spaces even though these rooms had extreme acoustic conditions in terms of background noise and reverberation. Likewise, no significant change was observed in their vocal loading parameters in the practice rooms. However, students’ subjective response to the different acoustic conditions of the practice rooms showed significant change and very strong correlations were observed with the T30 room acoustic parameter at 4k octave band and C80 from 500 Hz to 4 kHz. Using the information a preferred design for practice room acoustics for Opera singers was established based on room dimension, T30, C80 and G parameters at the frequencies showing the greatest correlation with the singers’ data that correspond to singers’ preferred ratings. In addition, the results of the side study showed that the Opera singers’ daily sound pressure levels due to overall vocal activity including both speech and singing and due to only singing were higher than other professional voice users such as teachers and call-centre operators and these levels were found to be reached over a shorter phonation time which showed that they are exposed to higher vocal loading.

The present study examines the impact of marketing capabilities through a network perspective on innovative capabilities and firm performance. The market orientation and the resource-based view that underpin marketing capabilities have mainly treated marketing as internal capability of the firm. As firms are increasingly inter-connected and part of a business networks, a firm’s marketing capabilities need to be examined beyond a single firm. But, to date, no study has yet examined a firm's marketing capabilities from a network perspective in order to understand their influence on innovative capabilities. Thus, this study extends the existing research and conceptualisation of marketing capabilities from an internal perspective of a firm to external network relationships of the firm. This network perspective is based on a firm’s view of its network relationships, which accounts for inter-firm relationships, as well as through digital technology and learning orientation. With the advent of the Internet and information technology, this study conceptualises digital technology as an enabler of the relationship between marketing capability and innovative capability. Since capabilities evolve to become routines and/or deteriorate over time, a firm's learning orientation is also conceptualised for examining the extent to which capabilities impact on innovative capabilities. A survey data of 300 UK-based firms were analysed using statistical analysis to examine the influence of marketing capabilities on innovative capabilities and in turn, firm performance. In addition, interaction analyses were performed to test for mediating and moderating relationships of digital technology and learning orientation. Findings of the analysis show strong support for product development capability; marketing implementation capability; pricing capability. The results support the relative impact of marketing capabilities on innovative capabilities. While marketing capabilities may comprise interdependent capabilities, this finding suggests that firms can enhance innovative capabilities by emphasizing the salient marketing capabilities. Importantly, digital technology has a significant and positive mediating relationship for the relationship between marketing capabilities and innovative capabilities. This finding indicates that knowledge of the application of information technology would facilitate exploitation and exploration of marketing capabilities that enhance innovative capabilities. As indicated by the positive moderation of learning orientation for the relationship between marketing capabilities and innovative capability, the potential to harness marketing capabilities is better enhanced through learning orientation and digital technology. This new perspective of marketing capability analysis benefits from a firm’s network perspective that recognises a firm’s external relationships and inter-connected nature of business interactions. In this instance, digital technology extends the boundary of firm beyond a single firm, and learning orientation complements market orientation with learning and gathering of external market information. This research advances knowledge about specific types of marketing capabilities for improving innovative capability and firm performance through digital technology capability. The study also makes a significant contribution to building theoretical knowledge of the role of digital technology in enabling innovative capabilities by developing and empirically testing a new construct of digital technology. As the ability to mobilise digital technology is firm-specific, this study extends knowledge about the extent of learning orientation (moderator) to the marketing capabilities and innovative capabilities relationship through digital technology.

School bullying has become a global concern due to its detrimental consequences on children's well-being. In the prevention and intervention of school bullying, teachers play a critical role, especially in detecting the signals of bullying, being aware of its consequences, and effectively responding to bullying incidents (Bradshaw et al., 2013; Horne et al., 2003). The current study aimed to explore teachers' personal and professional experiences of bullying, perceived school culture and climate, and motivation to combat bullying. A qualitative approach, a collective case study, was deemed appropriate to investigate these concepts through in-depth interviews. The participants of this study consisted of the regular education teachers (n =8) of a bilingual urban elementary school in the Midwest, United States. The results revealed that participants value anti-bullying practices and are intrinsically motivated to combat bullying. Their extrinsic motivation appeared to be negatively affected by the high workload and a lack of support systems available. Despite these concerns contributing to a lack of extrinsic motivation, the positive school culture and climate were significant external motivators. Teachers' experiences with bullying and perceptions of the school culture and climate are further interpreted to provide a holistic view of their motivation to combat bullying. Recommendations for future research and field practices are also discussed.