This research study is focused on the strategic planning process for digital convergence in South African enterprises; it analyses the sophistication of digital convergence plans by interrogating the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of organisation’s planning systems. Three research areas are probed: the planning process, the planning steps and the benefits and barriers of convergence, both anticipated and experienced. The planning process i.e. the ‘how’ is interrogated with respect to the following planning process dimensions: formalisation, consistency, flow, focus, participation and comprehensiveness. The ‘what’ identifies the relevant convergence planning steps, and additionally determines whether specific activities to identify the benefits, barriers and implementation issues related to these convergence initiatives, are included. The study also identifies and compares the benefits and barriers of convergence, both anticipated and experienced. While extensive research has been conducted into the technological aspects of convergence, there is a lack of research into the planning aspects, especially the extent to which organisations are strategically planning for convergence. The results from this study will assist organisations reflect on their planning process and will enable organisations understand weaknesses and strengths within their planning process for convergence. This study also proposes an enhanced model for convergence planning This study is exploratory in nature with the intention to look for patterns and to gain familiarity with the area of strategic planning for convergence. The study is based on a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews with organisations that have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, a converged infrastructure. There are 3 main sections after the introductory chapter. The first section (chapter 2) discusses the concepts that support digital convergence and identifies some of the numerous definitions of convergence that exist in the literature. It expands on the strategic nature of convergence and importantly, presents the contributions and shortcomings of previous research. The next section (chapter’s 3 and 4) justifies the primarily qualitative approach selected for this study and defines the data analysis strategy. The last section (chapter’s 5 and 6) presents the findings from the interviews and presents the concluding remarks.

Digital communication has shifted the way that communication takes place for many companies. The amount of technological communication platforms and tools available are high and are also still increasing which also entails that many companies have several ways to communicate available. Organizational decisions and Management incentives to adopt new platforms and tools for communication are in advance also influencing employees and middle managers in their day-to-day work. Research has in this manner highlighted managerial strategies to handle the implementation of technology in general and further pointed out how both technology and digital communication can influence employees in companies' different processes. Even though there is a vast amount of research about digital communication done, there is a general need for further research about the extensive amount of digital communication solutions available. A gap in earlier research was further seen as digital communication in the sales process in the national context of Sweden is lacking research. The sales process in this manner is one of the main processes within many companies that are seen to be affected by the implementation of digital communication. However, a deeper understanding of the employees and middle managers perspective is seen to be needed. To gain further insights and to shed light on the area of digital communication in a Swedish context, the influences that digital communication have on employees and middle managers are investigated, further the rationale behind using digital communication within the sales process is also studied. The empirical data that is collected through qualitative studies by conducting semi- structured interviews provided us with findings that shows three main positive influences and two main negative influences that digital communication has on the employees and middle managers within the company at hand. The positive influences can be summarized as, the convenience with using digital communication, the flexibility of location and the valuable information to be found on the platform and tools. The negative influences on the other hand were seen to be, the amount on communication channels and the inconvenience with finding information. Following the main aspects found with the rationale behind using digital communication within the sales process were identified to be, the perceived management reasoning & support, educational opportunities, ambassadors and varying use depending on work task. Both the influences and the rationale are then visualized in a model to simplify the main findings. The theoretical contributions of this study can facilitate a further understanding of digital communication. Further the study can provide managers with insights on how eventual implementations of digital communication may influence the workforce. Finally the empirical data can contribute to a broader overall understanding of digital communication. However, further research is necessary within this field to gain a more holistic view of the subject at hand.

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Conventional signal diversity techniques increase system complexity and/or result in an increase in the required signal bandwidth. A novel Time Spread (TS) diversity technique has been proposed in [1] aimed at improving the performance of digital communication systems in flat-fading channels without increasing their complexity or bandwidth usage. With TS, time diversity is obtained by transmitting a modulated spreading sequence, spanning over a temporal period longer than the channel coherence time Tc, for each information symbol. Unfortunately, this TS technique exhibits a Bit Error Rate (BER) performance floor at higher SNR values that renders the original technique less attractive. This dissertation is primarily concerned with the nullification of this BER performance floor. Sec¬ondly, the ability of the TS technique to transform a flat-fading channel into an Additive White Gaus¬sian Noise (AWGN) channel is investigated and exploited to enhance the performance of coding techniques designed for AWGN channels, when used in flat-fading channels. A new method is described by which TS sequences can be temporally expanded, thereby increas¬ing their obtainable time diversity gains. This method also reduces the computational complexity of a TS system, while retaining the signal diversity properties of a longer non-expanded sequence. The BER floor in TS systems is caused by the distortion of the Aperiodic Auto-Correlation (AAC) properties of overlapping spreading sequences in fading channels, resulting in Inter Code(Sequence) Interference (ICI) between spreading sequences. A Pilot Symbol Aided Modulation (PSAM) tech¬nique is adapted for the TS system to provide accurate channel estimates required by the Inter Code(Sequence) Interference Cancellation (lCIC) module. A hybrid ICIC technique, which corrects the fading TS symbol amplitudes during periods of above average instantaneous SNR levels, is shown to be the most effective. This ICIC technique enables the TS technique to provide gains similar to that of conventional third order diversity techniques at average Eb/ No ratios above 10 dB. Finally, the transparency and ability of the TS technique to transform fading channels into Gaus¬sian channels are exploited to allow the integration of conventional convolutional codes with the TS system. The coded TS system achieves substantial gains when operating in a Rayleigh flat-fading channel when a soft decision Viterbi decoder is used in the TS receiver. A strategy by which Turbo Code (TC) techniques can be integrated with the TS technique is discussed as a concluding notion to illustrate the flexibility of the TS technique. Future research areas are identified based on the findings of this dissertation. These include the investigation of more effective adaptive ICIC schemes and the possibility of using Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) communication techniques over a narrow band channel by employing TS- and Multi-User (MU)-detection methods, combined with existing ICIC techniques. The cryptographic value of the TS technique also provides ground for future research. / Dissertation (MEng (Electronic Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

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A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Communication Science at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2012. / Advances in electronic service technology have created great opportunities as well as threats to organizations in various business and services sectors. As such businesses, either willingly or reluctantly, are increasingly embracing the Internet as distribution channel in order to remain competitive or gain market share. With particular reference to e-services, absence of accurate information on factors that have influenced user’s behaviour to adopt or use e-services could mislead an organization into adopting unhelpful solutions as it strives to accelerate the implementation of e-services. The study is undertaken by a student who lives in the heart of a rural community in South Africa and also attends a University which is based in a rural settlement. This study, based on the perceptions of rural communities on the safety of e-commerce transactions, investigates factors that influence adoption and usage of e-service, especially, in eNkandla rural communities. Factors were empirically tested against data collected from four hundred participants using survey questionnaires. Perceived complexity was found to be the most significantly related factor affecting e-service adoption in rural communities of eNkandla, followed in turn by privacy and compatibility. Quality of the Internet and its relative advantage also had a notable effect on e-service usage and adoption in eNkandla rural communities.

Purpose and problem discussion: Nowadays, it is crucial to implement social responsibility to business operations to succeed as a business. Companies face increased demands from customers and stakeholders to show their actions regarding social responsibility. At the same time, digital development is shaping the communication industry, creating new communication platforms in the world. The purpose of this study is to explore digital communication agencies role in the production and implementation of digital products within digital channels to best understand digital social responsibility. The study aims to answer the research questions: What social responsibilities does a digital communication agency have in regard to the products and messages they produce for digital channels? and How do digital communication agencies become socially responsible when using digital channels? Method: An abductive analysis method was applied to semi-structured interviews with digital communication agencies in Jönköping, Sweden. The analysis of the empirical findings has resulted in deeper understanding of social responsibility in digital environments; a study area that has not been explored before. Four digital communication agencies represent the average digital social responsibility mindset and business culture in Jönköping, Sweden. This gave us the possibility to research social responsibility on digital channels. Results, discussion and conclusions: The results show that the digital communication agencies clients are entirely responsible for the digital material published on their own digital channels. Although, the agencies do need to make sure they produce the best possible material for their clients to avoid bad relationships with stakeholders and a bad reputation. The results also show that social responsibility is not first priority for any company; profitability always comes first. The key to digital social responsibility is to work with the right clients and thoroughly analyse the client’s business operations to bring out the best in each case and to be prepared for backlashes. The digital communication agencies could also benefit from a crisis plan, to minimise stress and optimize the problem solving if a crisis would occur. If doing this correctly,the agencies enable genuine and honest digital communication, which minimises the risk of being perceived unfairly on digital platforms. This is especially of importance on digital platforms, where the speed, great reach and two-way communication makes it even easier to receive negativity and face backlashes. A digital communication agency can become socially responsible by working with the right clients, as well as producing and publishing genuine and honest digital communication.

The use of digital communication has become more interesting for organizations since the rise of globalization and liberation of markets. It allows employees within multinational companies to communicate effectively with each other. The use of digital communication when managing global, IT-enabled change is, however, an area that has not received much attention from scholars. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate use of digital communication in a global IT change project. Iveroth (2010) argues that a high degree of willingness to change is achieved when employees understand the intended change, accept the meaning of the change, have an interest in changing and finally act accordingly towards the new intended state (behaviour). Thus, a research question needed to be addressed: How do employees perceive digital communication and what impact does this communication have on their willingness to change? The study was carried out within a global organization that performed an IT change project in which a content management system (CMS) was updated from an old to a new platform. With support from the chosen theoretical framework, empirical data was then collected through interviews, observations and document analysis during a 10-week internship. To grasp the full complexity of IT change, a meta-framework was used as the theoretical framework of this study. Since the meta-framework focuses on how change leaders can manage successful IT change, and does not solely focus on communication aspects within an IT change initiative, extensions of relevant organizational change communication theories were included in the framework. The result showed that when change leaders use digital communication in an IT change initiative, it has a strong effect on how employees perceive communication. In general, we found patterns indicating that the use of digital communication can create a certain amount of understanding for a global IT change initiative among employees. However, reaching meaning, interest and behaviour among employees is more complex.

Det svenska skolväsendet har sedan 2000-talet fått övergripande stöd från regeringen för att utveckla den digitaliserade undervisningsformen. Trots detta har upprepande årsrapporter kring IT-användning i skolan visat på brister inom användarkunskap och IT-kompetens utvecklingsmöjligheter. Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga hur digitala lärplattformar används och varför den digitala kommunikationen mellan lärare och elever inte uppnått förväntade resultat. Följande forskningsfrågor har varit relevanta i detta sammanhang: Hur ser användandet av lärplattformar på gymnasieskolan ut idag? Varför har digitalisering ännu inte slagit igenom som ett effektivt verktyg i undervisningen? Studien är baserad på en empirisk undersökning där data insamlats från intervjuer med rektorer och lärare från sex gymnasieskolor i Gävle och Uppsala. Ett slumpmässigt urval av 80 elever har även svarat på en enkät med mål att representera den generella inställningen till skolans digitala kommunikationssystem för delning av undervisnings-och studiematerial. Vidare har en litteraturgenomgång utförts där problemområden och brister inom forskningsområdet presenteras. Dels är informationen hämtad från forskare inom kommunikation och teknologi, men även från Skolverket och Skolinspektionen. Resultatet visar på att skolans lärplattformar används som verktyg för informationsöverföring där information överförs i vertikal riktning från lärare till elever. I nuläget används lärplattformar främst på grund av krav från ledningen och inte som en kanal för dubbelriktad kommunikation, där lärare och elever kan diskutera lösningar på uppgifter och problem, få feedback samt tips och råd. Resultatet påvisar även att lärare upplever tekniska brister i delar av lärplattformen och att de saknar systematiska arbetsrutiner för effektiv användning. Detta utgör ett hinder som begränsar kommunikationens effektivitet med avseende till kunskapsutveckling genom lärplattformer. / The Swedish school system has since the 2000s, received overall support from the government to develop digitized teaching methods. Despite this, repetitive annual reports on IT usage in schools revealed shortcomings in user knowledge and development of IT-skills. The purpose of this study is to identify how digital learning platforms are used and why digitized communication between teachers and students in high schools have not achieved the expected results. The following research questions were relevant in the study: How is the use of learning platforms in secondary schools today? Why has the digitization not yet been seen as an effective tool in teaching? The study is based on empirical data, where data is collected from interviews with principals and teachers from six different high schools in Gävle and Uppsala. A random sample of 80 students also completed a questionnaire with the aim to represent the general attitude to the school’s digital communications system for sharing of learning material. Furthermore, a literature review helped to evaluate problem areas and gaps in the research presented. The results show that the schools’ learning platforms are used as tools for information sharing, where the information is transferred in a vertical direction from teachers to students. Today the teaching platform is mainly used due to demands from the school management, and not as a channel for bidirectional communication, where teachers and students can discuss solutions to the tasks and problems, or to get feedback and advice. The result also shows that teachers are experiencing technical defects in parts of the learning platform and that lack of systematic work procedures prevent it from effective use. This is a barrier that limits the effectiveness of communication with regard to the development of knowledge through learning platforms.