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E-handel ökar kontinuerligt och förändrar detaljhandelskartan oavbrutet som bidragit till att detaljhandeln genomgår ett strukturellt skifte mot e-handel där företag behöver använda sig av nya strategier för att vara framgångsrika. Framförallt möter mikro- och småföretag större utmaningar då de har mindre resurser och är mindre väletablerade på marknaden, där Strategy-as-Practice (S-as-P) ses som ett alternativ till den traditionella forskningen kring strategi då den är mer applicerbar för att förstå strategi i mindre företag. Syftet med studien är genom ett S-as-P perspektiv undersöka skillnader/likheter mellan klädbutikers strategier kring det strukturella skiftet mot e-handel.   Inom S-as-P ligger fokus varför, hur och vad som sker i formulering, planering och implementering av organisationers strategi. Det finns tre olika perspektiv inom S-as-P för att studera ett företags strategi, practitioners, practices och praxis. Studien har baserats på S-as-P genom ett konceptuellt ramverk uppsatt av forskarna vilket innefattar att studera de tre grundpelarna som utgör S-as-P i förhållande till företag inom klädbranschen. Detta för att tolka företagens strategizing och förstå deras strategizing utifrån planerade-, entreprenöriella-, konsensus- och påtvingade strategier.  Studien har genomförts efter en kvalitativ ansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer, där fem företag har intervjuats. Forskningsprocessen har liknat en abduktiv ansats, där det skett en växelverkan mellan teori och empiri med en möjlighet för vidare insamling av empiri och teori tills att en mättnad uppnåtts. Därefter har forskarna analyserat fram klädbutikers strategi och hur det strukturella skiftet mot e-handel har påverkat företagens strategier.  Resultatet visar att strategier är djupt influerade av enskilda individer. I respektive företag som deltagit i studien finns det en tydlig länk mellan varför strategiska handlingar genomförs och den individ som besitter en högre roll. Genomgående visar resultatet att ägaren kommer styra och hantera sitt företag utifrån sitt perspektiv varpå individen som är involverad i samtliga aktiviteter i ett företag kommer prägla företagets strategi.

Several heterogeneous, intelligent and distributed devices can be connected to interact with one another over the internet in what is known as the internet of things (IoT). Also, the concept of IoT can be exploited in the industrial environment for increasing the production output of goods and services and for mitigating the risk of disaster occurrences. This application of IoT for enhancing industrial production is known as industrial IoT (IIoT). More so, the benefits of IoT technology can be particularly exploited across the maritime industry in what is termed the internet of maritime things (IoMT) where sensors and actuator devices are implanted on marine equipment in order to foster the communication efficacy of nautical radio networks. Marine explorations may suffer from unwanted situations such as transactional delays, environmental degradation, insecurity, seaport congestions, accidents and collisions etc, which could arise from severe environmental conditions. As a result, there is a need to develop proper communication techniques that will improve the overall quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) of marine users. To address these, the merits of contemporaneous technologies such as ubiquitous computing, software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) in addition to salubrious communication techniques including emergent configurations (EC), channel estimation (CE) and communication routing protocols etc, can be utilized for sustaining optimal operation of pelagic networks. Emergent configuration (EC) is a technology that can be adapted into maritime radio networks to support the operation and collaboration of IoT connected devices in order to improve the efficiency of the connected IoT systems for maximum user satisfaction. To meet user goals, the connected devices are required to cooperate with one another in an adaptive, interoperable, and homogeneous manner. In this thesis, a survey on the concept of IoT is presented in addition to a review of IIoT systems. The applications of ubiquitous computing and SDN technology are employed to design a newfangled network architecture which is specifically propounded for enhancing the throughput of oil and gas production in the maritime ecosystem. The components of this architecture work in collaboration with one another by attempting to manage and control the exploration process of deep ocean activities especially during emergencies involving anthropogenic oil and gas spillages. Several heterogeneous, intelligent and distributed devices can be connected to interact with one another over the internet in what is known as the internet of things (IoT). Also, the concept of IoT can be exploited in the industrial environment for increasing the production output of goods and services and for mitigating the risk of disaster occurrences. This application of IoT for enhancing industrial production is known as industrial IoT (IIoT). More so, the benefits of IoT technology can be particularly exploited across the maritime industry in what is termed the internet of maritime things (IoMT) where sensors and actuator devices are implanted on marine equipment in order to foster the communication efficacy of nautical radio networks. Marine explorations may suffer from unwanted situations such as transactional delays, environmental degradation, insecurity, seaport congestions, accidents and collisions etc, which could arise from severe environmental conditions. As a result, there is a need to develop proper communication techniques that will improve the overall quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) of marine users. To address these, the merits of contemporaneous technologies such as ubiquitous computing, software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) in addition to salubrious communication techniques including emergent configurations (EC), channel estimation (CE) and communication routing protocols etc, can be utilized for sustaining optimal operation of pelagic networks. Emergent configuration (EC) is a technology that can be adapted into maritime radio networks to support the operation and collaboration of IoT connected devices in order to improve the efficiency of the connected IoT systems for maximum user satisfaction. To meet user goals, the connected devices are required to cooperate with one another in an adaptive, interoperable, and homogeneous manner. In this thesis, a survey on the concept of IoT is presented in addition to a review of IIoT systems. The applications of ubiquitous computing and SDN technology are employed to design a newfangled network architecture which is specifically propounded for enhancing the throughput of oil and gas production in the maritime ecosystem. The components of this architecture work in collaboration with one another by attempting to manage and control the exploration process of deep ocean activities especially during emergencies involving anthropogenic oil and gas spillages. On the other hand, CE is a utilitarian communication technique that can be exploited during maritime exploration processes which offer additional reinforcement to the capacities of the nautical radio network. This technique enables the receivers of deep-sea networks to efficiently approximate the channel impulse response (CIR) of the wireless communication channel so that the effects of the communication channel on the transmitting aggregated cluster head information can be proficiently understood and predicted for useful decision-making procedures. Two CE schemes named inter-symbol interference/ average noise reduction (ISI/ANR) and reweighted error-reducing (RER) are designed in this study for estimating maritime channels for supporting the communication performances of nautical radio networks in both severe and light-fading environmental conditions. In the proposed RER method, the Manhattan distance of the CIR of an orthodox adaptive estimator is taken, which is subsequently normalised by a stability constant ɛ whose responsibility is for correcting any potential numerical system instability that may arise during the updating stages of the estimation process. To decrease the received signal error, a log-sum penalty function is eventually multiplied by an adjustable leakage (ɛ ) ̈that provides additional stability to the oscillating channel behaviour. The performance of the proposed RER method is further strengthened and made resilient against channel effects by the introduction of a reweighting attractor that further contracts the mean square error of this proposed estimator. In the ISI/ANR technique, the effects of possible ISI that may arise from maritime transmissions is considered and transformed using a low-pass filter that is incorporated for eliminating the effects of channel noise possible effects of multipath propagation. The RER scheme offered superior CE performances in comparison to other customary techniques such as the adaptive recursive least squares and normalised least mean square method in addition to conventional linear approaches such as least squares, linear minimum mean square error and maximum-likelihood estimation method. The proposed ISI/ANR technique offered an improved MSE performance in comparison to all considered linear methods. Finally, from this study, we were able to establish that accurate CE methods can improve the QoS and QoE of nautical radio networks in terms of network data rate and system outage probability. / Thesis (PhD (Computer Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / University of Pretoria Doctoral research grant, South African National Research Foundation/Research and Innovation Support and Advancement (NRF/RISA) research grant. Center for Connected Intelligence, Advanced Sensor Networks research group, University of Pretoria. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / PhD (Computer Engineering) / Unrestricted