Globalisation and rapid environmental change have created many challenges for public and private organisations across Iraq as a developing country, particularly in the higher education sector. This includes, for example, decreases in government funding; increased demand for higher education; a need for economic transformation, and related competitiveness of organizations. Such challenges require exceptional leaders and strategic planning in order to take action to improve. In Iraq, the higher education sector is still one of the main foundations in progressing the knowledge economy. Studies into leadership style, strategic planning processes, and the importance of leadership and organisational culture to an organisation’s success have been used to assist both public and private Iraqi colleges in responding to the challenges they face. Although, some studies have examined the interaction between leadership and strategic planning, and leadership and organisational success, there has been no empirical study that has investigated how these three variables interact together. Thus, this study aimed, firstly, to identify the current leadership styles and strategic planning processes in the colleges and the challenges they faced, and to gain an understanding from the perspective of the senior leaders themselves as to how they might best respond to the current situation. Secondly, based on the participants’ experiences, knowledge and perceptions, the study aimed to identify implications for both practice and policy to help improve the colleges’ outcomes. The study involved a mixed-methods approach and was conducted in two stages. During the first stage, the researcher gathered quantitative data by administering a survey package to 129 leaders (deans, associate deans, and heads of departments) across both public and private colleges in the capital city of Baghdad. During the second stage, the researcher gathered qualitative data to more deeply explore the survey results by conducting individual interviews with a sub-sample of 21 leaders from both college types (ten public and 11 private). In the data analyses stages, both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were applied to compiling tables and charts, and to test hypotheses, by employing the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Microsoft Excel, and NVivo. The results of study showed that both transformational and transactional leadership styles played a varied and vital role in the colleges’ strategic planning processes, and in turn their success. The fact that private colleges were ‘for profit’ and public colleges were ‘not for profit’, as well as their contrasting funding models, highlighted key differences between the two college types’ leadership and general modus operandi. While it was found that both transformative leadership and transactional leadership styles were necessary to address the challenges colleges faced in the Iraqi educational context, the impetus for change extended far beyond the need for professional development of leaders. The embracing of information communication technologies, and reliable Internet was seen as necessary in all aspects of the colleges’ work and provision for teaching and learning, and students’ success. This applied to both college types along with the need for closer adherence to government regulations and more focused government coordination of colleges’ administrative functions. Furthermore, implications for making successful improvements to practice also identified the need to manage the challenge of sociocultural influences on the appointments and promotions of leaders. It was concluded that a greater emphasis on teamwork and provision of incentives for staff, along with a ‘boost’ to pedagogy and practice, which could be provided through the adoption of information communication technologies and appropriate professional development strategies, would enhance the colleges’ ranks and the status of their qualifications. Also, theoretically, the study offers a value-add to leadership, strategic planning process, and organisational success literature in the form of a conceptual model that links these variables in the context of Iraqi higher education sector.
Browse Iraqi academic journals and research papers
This study aims to conduct an exhaustive comparison between the performance of human translators and artificial intelligence-powered machine translation systems, specifically examining the top three systems: Spider-AI, Metacate, and DeepL. A variety of texts from distinct categories were evaluated to gain a profound understanding of the qualitative differences, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, between human and machine translations. The results demonstrated that human translation significantly outperforms machine translation, with larger gaps in literary texts and texts characterized by high linguistic complexity. However, the performance of machine translation systems, particularly DeepL, has improved and in some contexts
... Show More
(7)
(6)
The Historical effect of Conflict between North and South
Nitinol (NiTi) is used in many medical applications, including hard tissue replacements, because of its suitable characteristics, including a close elastic modulus to that of bones. Due to the great importance of the mechanical properties of this material in tissue replacements, this work aims to study the hysteresis response in an attempt to explore the ability of the material to remember its previous mechanical state in addition to its ability to withstand stress and to obtain the optimal dimensions and specifications for the manufacturer of NiTi actuators. Stress-strain examination is done in a computational way using a mutable Lagoudas MATLAB code for various coil radii, environment temperatures, and coil lengths. The computational m
... Show More
(1)
Bee keping projects is one of the most important agricltural investment projects because it generate profit in a short period . In addition to the multiplicity of products and other benefits . Research aimed at study the feasibility of two projects one hand in the origin of the Al – Mashrok since 2006 , kicking off with ten hives , and the scond proposal , kicking of 100 hives using the criteria of the world bank . Results showed that the bee keeping projects is economically feasible, whether small or large .. Even when the analysis of the sensitivity of the project to changes which may occur in the price of output and resources by reducing costs and increasing revenues by 10% it remains economically viable .
... Show More
The behavior of thinking is consider one of the modern concepts that appear in the last 20 years, this concept has attracted the attention of psychologists and researchers for thinking has a great role in many fields like teaching ,educational,economical,cultural and social fields.
One of thinking manner is imaginal thinking that has a great role in human civilization. imaginal thinking lead to innovation ,poems, inventions and arts. imaginal thinkingled to highscores in talented schools by escalating their thinking range and solving problems that consider one of organized and free assumption thinking.
The development of problems thinking strategies reflect the development of organized brain process ability.
That studies assumes
The distribution of the intensity of the comet Ison C/2013 is studied by taking its histogram. This distribution reveals four distinct regions that related to the background, tail, coma and nucleus. One dimensional temperature distribution fitting is achieved by using two mathematical equations that related to the coordinate of the center of the comet. The quiver plot of the gradient of the comet shows very clearly that arrows headed towards the maximum intensity of the comet.
Polymer electrolytes systems compose of (PEO+KI+I2) and (PEO+RbI+I2) with different concentration, and a fixed amount of ethylene carbonate (EC) and propylene carbonate (PC) over temperatures range 293-343 K prepared by solution cast me
... Show More
(3)
<p>The objective of this paper is to study the dynamical behavior of an aquatic food web system. A mathematical model that includes nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton is proposed and analyzed. It is assumed that, the phytoplankton divided into two compartments namely toxic phytoplankton which produces a toxic substance as a defensive strategy against predation by zooplankton, and a nontoxic phytoplankton. All the feeding processes in this food web are formulating according to the Lotka-Volterra functional response. This model is represented mathematically by the set of nonlinear differential equations. The existence, uniqueness and boundedness of the solution of this model are investigated. The local and global stability
... Show More
(1)