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.
The present study aimed to look for the differences in the oxidative stress status in sera and saliva samples of type 2 diabetic Iraqi patients with and without proliferative diabetic retinopathy. As well as to look for the possibility whether this status can be measured in saliva as an alternative sample to that of serum, hence to achieve that total oxidant status, total antioxidant status and oxidative stress index were measured in both sera and saliva samples of two groups of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and the healthy individuals. Upon the comparison between patients without proliferative diabetic retinopathy and the control sample the results showed presence of a significant increase (p < 0.05) of total oxidant st
... Show MoreAn essential issue in obstetrics is the prevalence of maternal and fetal complications in pregnant women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of pregnancy complications among various phenotypes of pregnant women with PCOS.
Cloud computing offers a new way of service provision by rearranging various resources over the Internet. The most important and popular cloud service is data storage. In order to preserve the privacy of data holders, data are often stored in cloud in an encrypted form. However, encrypted data introduce new challenges for cloud data deduplication, which becomes crucial for big data storage and processing in the cloud. Traditional deduplication schemes cannot work on encrypted data. Among these data, digital videos are fairly huge in terms of storage cost and size; and techniques that can help the legal aspects of video owner such as copyright protection and reducing the cloud storage cost and size are always desired. This paper focuses on v
... Show Moreسها علي حسين, هويدة إسماعيل إبراهيم, Journal of Physical Education, 2017 - Cited by 1
Background :Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) was a widely used marker for skeletal and hepatobiliary disorders, but its activity was also increased in atherosclerosis and peripheral vascular disease. Several study has showed that ALP activity was increased in the sera of diabetic patients. The current study was conducted to evaluate ALP activity in type 2 diabetic patients and optimum conditions for enzyme activity in their sera.Methods: This study was carried out at in AL-Yarmok hospital(diabetic center) between February /2009 and April /2009. Fifty two patients with type 2 diabetes have been enrolled. Besides BMI, WHR, serum fasting blood glucose, ALP, HbA1C,uric acid and lipid profile levels have been performed .The relationship bet
... Show MoreThe liability limit liability limit and reinsurance re factors insurance are important in influencing the achievement of company's competitive goals and achieve success and excellence in the market and because the limit of liability and reinsurance aimed to increase output with the stability of inputs leading to increased insurance business and increase profits. The study was based on two variables presidents interact with each other to form the intellectual and philosophical framework has two ( the limit of liability and reinsurance ) . The study was launched from a problem expressed by a number of targeted questions answered from the elucidation of theoretical philosophy and intellectual goals of these variables and highlight the impor
... Show MoreFiled experiment was conducted to test the effect of saline water and potassium fertilizers rate on proline and water potential of Pisum sativum L. (Var.Senador Cambados ) leaves . Treatments of the experiment included two levels of water salinity( 2, 7 dSm-1) as a main plot and fertilizer rates as a sub plot. Results indicated that irrigation of plant with saline water 7 dSm-1 and fertilization 150 kg/donum increased proline accumulation and water potential 0.31 mmol/g,-17.00 bar at 9 AM morning and 0.62 mmol/g , -21.00 bar at 3 PM afternoon ,Irrigating plant with a 2 dSm-1 and fertilization 300 kg/donum decreased proline accumulation and water potential of leaves 0.22 mmol/g, -16.00 bar at 9 A
... Show MoreBackground: Oral squamous cell carcinoma is the most prevalent malignant neoplasm of the oral cavity which results from accumulated genetic and epigenetic alterations. It is not always inexorable and may be reversible if early intervention in the process can occur to prevent further genetic mutation and disease progression. The FHIT gene is a tumor suppressor gene located in FRA3B region which is the most active common fragile site, where DNA damage leading to aberrant transcripts and translocations frequently occur. The WWOX is a tumor suppressor gene that plays a central role in tumor suppression through transcriptional repression and apoptosis, with its apoptotic function the more prominent of the two. This study aimed to evaluate and co
... Show MoreSensibly highlighting the hidden structures of many real-world networks has attracted growing interest and triggered a vast array of techniques on what is called nowadays community detection (CD) problem. Non-deterministic metaheuristics are proved to competitively transcending the limits of the counterpart deterministic heuristics in solving community detection problem. Despite the increasing interest, most of the existing metaheuristic based community detection (MCD) algorithms reflect one traditional language. Generally, they tend to explicitly project some features of real communities into different definitions of single or multi-objective optimization functions. The design of other operators, however, remains canonical lacking any inte
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