The purpose of this study was to analyze and record the characteristics of grandparents who are raising school-aged children as they relate to how the United States is responding to their needs and the needs of their grandchildren. The researcher sought to determine the characteristics of grandparent-headed households with no parent present in regards to housing, nutritional assistance, transportation, employment, age of children in the household, language spoken in the home, and family type, as measured by the 2010 United States Census Bureau. This study was conducted using a quantitative, descriptive research design. The data used for this study were indirect estimates produced by statistical model-based methods using sample survey, decennial census, and administrative data sources compiled by the United States Census Bureau. The Census Bureau collects data about American families for the nation, states and communities, and data related to socioeconomic status, family composition, and language spoken were used to more fully understand characteristics of households where grandparents are raising grandchildren outside of the traditional 1-2 parent American households. Participants included the 92 grandparent-headed households from among the 15,482 participants in the American Community Survey, which included 556 households where grandparents were living with grandchildren. To address the research questions, descriptive statistics were used, including frequencies and percentages. The statistical package SPSS was used to analyze the data. The results of this study revealed that of the grandparents who lived with their grandchildren where there was no parent present, 100% lived in housing units, 75% participated in the yearly food stamp/supplemental nutrition assistance program, 36% had no transportation, 26% were female householders who were unemployed and did not have a husband living in the household, 74% had related children who were 6-17 years old in the household, 51% lived in homes where only English was spoken, and 53% resided in homes where there was a married couple, while 39% of them were in homes with female householders with no husband present.

A lot of empirical research has been done on Savings and credit cooperative Societies in Kenya for decades but majority have focused more on the challenges that these Sacco’s face. Most of these research have focused on finding ways of increasing the competitiveness of these Sacco’s within a certain geographical region. However, very few literature exists on the challenges that these Sacco’s face in their quest to internationalize and find diaspora customer. Over the years, there has been an increase in Kenyan diasporas sending remittances back home through relatives and friends for the purposes of investments but their efforts have been futile. Some of these diasporas find it difficult to invest in other financial institutions due to bureaucracy and high interest rates. This is where the Sacco’s then come in due to their simple teams and conditions and low interest rates. This thesis sought to establish how Sacco’s in Kenya internationalize and the challenges that they face in the internationalization process. The research followed a quantitative approach whereby four Saccos were Analyzed after semi structured interviews were conducted with the managers of the respective firms. Based on the research conducted, the empirical findings reveal that Saccos in Kenya adopted the network approach of internationalization whereby they establish formal or informal relationships with participants in the foreign markets and that way they are able to influence more networks. The findings also revealed that the main challenges that hinder Saccos from internationalizing are competition, management and governance as well as knowledge and information systems. Geographical distance and competition were not a major challenges as earlier revealed by the literature.

Scrum is a widely used methodology for software development that is born of the Agile movement. In recent years DevOps has been increasing in popularity within the software industry. The purpose of this thesis is to firstly, explore the technical and social challenges a Scrum team may face when adopting DevOps. Secondly, to explore what collaboration mechanisms that can facilitate a closer cooperation between development and operations. A multiple case study was conducted using semi-structured interviews as the data collection method. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Three technical challenges and one social challenge emerged from the analysis. Additionally, four mechanisms were identified during the analysis as ways to achieve a closer collaboration between the development and operations teams. The result discussion showed that challenges of adopting DevOps when using Scrum are comparable to the findings of previous research where the scope of methodology is not limited to Scrum. Furthermore, the identified collaboration mechanisms can be used by organizations to enhance collaboration between development and operations but should not be seen as strict guidelines.

Background New graduate nurses face many workplace-related challenges in their first year of practice, which contributes to physical and mental strains. As a result, high levels of occupational stress are experienced among newly graduated nurses, leading them to doubt their willingness to continue in nursing. Furthermore, occupational stress is proven to interfere with both personal and professional risk factors, making it an important subject to highlight. Aim The overall purpose of this study was to describe newly graduated nurses’ experience of occupational stress during their first working-year. Method This literature study is based on twelve qualitative scientific articles, which has been analysed and assessed through a five-step model. Results The most frequently described state was feeling unprepared or unable to meet the various requirements of their profession. Challenges were associated with a knowledge gap between theory and practice, an overwhelming reality, leadership, responsibilities and difficulties adapting. There were also connections between the prevalence of long-term stress and early career burnout or turnover. Four main themes emerged from the results; A demanding work environment; To be on your own; Inability to relax; After adversity comes success. Conclusion New graduate nurses experience a mismatch between the external expectations of them as nurses and their own perception of their ability to perform accordingly. As they develop into professionals in their field, much support is needed. This increases the chances of them succeeding in fighting through their stressful challenges and remain sustainably in their positions.

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Background. Software companies make frequent development in their software products to improve their quality. Agile software development (ASD) helps in the rapid delivery of the software product with consistent quality to the customer. Agile Software development shares a lot of characteristics with knowledge-intensive works, and it also needs lot of knowledge from different domains of both human and com- puting domains. Knowledge is defined as a belief of one individual capability for an effective action. Tacit knowledge is a category of the knowledge management which is defined an individuals’ memory, action or beliefs. Moreover, tacit knowledge plays a crucial role in ASD. However, tacit knowledge is hard to transfer among team mem- bers as tacit knowledge is based on an individual experience. Tacit knowledge is not documented for further reference so there is a need to study how efficiently can tacit knowledge is currently being transferred in the industry, what challenges are being faced in tacit knowledge transfer and the mitigation strategies used to overcome the tacit knowledge transfer challenges. Objectives. In this present thesis, we focused on how tacit knowledge is being transferred among team members in agile software development. Objective 1: To identify the current tacit knowledge transfer mechanism in agile software development. Objective 2: To identify challenges in managing tacit knowledge transfer between team members in Agile software development. Objective 3: To explore mitigation strategies to overcome the challenges faced dur- ing tacit knowledge transfer. Methods. In this study, SLR and interviews were implemented to achieve the objective. SLR was used to achieve the first two objectives, and interviews were conducted to achieve all the objectives. Results. From SLR, a total of 21 challenges and 12 transfer mechanisms have been identified whereas, from the interviews, a total of 12 challenges, 8 transfer mecha- nisms, and 7 mitigation strategies have been identified. There were new challenges and transfer mechanisms identified in both research methods. Some of the transfer mechanisms consist of daily scrum calls and day-to-day forums among the teams. Both the research methods’ results indicate that one of the most challenging parts while transferring tacit knowledge is the lack of critical thinking with human orienta- tion. Based on the interviews, some of the mitigation strategies such as regular sprint meetings, and online whiteboarding were considered to overcome the tacit knowledge transfer challenges. Conclusions. Based on the challenges identified from the interview, it is evident that teams working in distributed teams are facing more challenges in transferring tacit knowledge, and tacit knowledge transfer sessions should be recorded to reduce the challenges.

Background: Project Management is an overall methodology that is used for the execution of specific activities which require resources and planning from the organization. A new project methodology, agile project management was introduced when specific tasks required rapid response to constantly changing conditions. In an agile project management, the cross-functional team consists of team members from various departments in the organization with different knowledge levels. The distribution of knowledge level and various work roles in the cross-functional team can bring up important strategies as different challenges as well. Therefore, it is a great of importance from the management level consider different strategies in order to overcome the challenges. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present the effective strategies and common challenges of the involvement of cross-functional teams in an agile project to obtain a better understanding about when to implement it and how these can be useful from a managerial perspective.Method: The current study follows qualitative research by performing an interview qualitative study with participants from different professional backgrounds and companies from Sweden by performing semi-structured interviews.Conclusion: The results present the four themes were identified which are: communication, knowledge sharing, leadership as the effective strategies and, identified challenges as the common challenges in a cross-functional team while using agile project management.

Cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular in the business and financial world. With arguments for and against, people praising it and people demanding a ban, the highest financial returns and the worst economic falls, it is widely discussed and splits the world. This research has taken the focus of experienced Swedish private investors and analyzed the factors that affect their decisions in terms of cryptocurrency investments. Previous research had found patterns within the demographic and strategies of the investors as well as the risks, diversifying or hedging opportunities, and government regulations associated with cryptocurrencies. These findings were used to form semi- structured interviews where the investors would express their opinions and decisions. This resulted in new contributions to the research in terms of the allocation of private investments in cryptocurrencies and the lack of strategy in the investments. Research was also confirmed in terms of government regulations, what drives these risky investments, and the skeptical future of cryptocurrencies.