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.
Abstract
The current research aims to identify the level of organizational relaxation among the employees of educational directorates in the Sultanate of Oman. The descriptive approach was used, as well as a questionnaire of two parts to collect data. The questionnaire consists of (15) items divided into three themes about the relaxing level. It was applied on a sample of (406) male & female employees of the educational directorates who were randomly selected. The results of the study showed that the level of organizational relaxation was low. The study results also found that there were no statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α ≤ 0.05) of the study sample in the level of org
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The Umayyad poets tried to invest all artistic tools in order to achieve a measure of creativity in their texts. The phenomenon of visual composition is breaking the familiar writing system, with the aim of increasing the number of possible connotations. The visual in the Umayyad poetry tries to replace it through expression with the visual image, and its manifestations were manifested by the multiplication of punctuation marks in the body of the poetic text and the tearing of the single poetic line by cutting it into several sentences or repetition.
Keywords: visual formation, poetic writing, Umayyad poetry, recipien
This research seeks to unravel the components of the argumentative discourse in the Book ofʻRawdat al-MuhebbeenwaNozhatt al-Mushtaqeenʼ - The Garden of Lovers and the Promenade of Longing People – by Ibn Al-Qayyem Al-Jawziyah. This is because this book has a moderate discourse with a sound Islamic thought that is characterized by its sustainability, popularity, realism, and interaction with the successive developments of the new age. This reflects the intellectual maturity the composing process has reached in the philosophy of love and its educational bases in every place and time. To explore the componets, properties, and the working mechanisms of an argumentative discourse in Ibn Qayyem’s book, the present work has been conducted
... Show MoreThe impact of a Schiff base namely 2-((thiophen-2-ylmethylene)amino)benzenethiol to corrode mild steel in 1 M HCl resolved was evaluated using different weight loss technique and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).different weight measurements to expand that the 2-((thiophen-2-ylmethylene) amino) benzenethiol inhibits the corrosion of mild steel through adsorbing of top for mild steel and block the active locality. The inhibitive impacts of 2-((thiophen-2-ylmethylene)amino)benzenethiol increase with increasing concentration and decrease with increasing temperature. SEM to checking revealed that the alloy surface was quite unaffected and formed protective film on its surface. The investigated
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The critical success factors of the means of the most modern in determining the main directions for organizations to achieve competitive advantage. and can be a critical success factors in organizations that overlap in the functional areas of the organization. that successful organizations use these factors to get to the uniqueness and distinction. as the entrance of critical success factors with the capacity Evaluative phase correction because discovery increases the perception of managers of what is important to the organization and using them to get to the Strategic Entrepreneurship. as it begins in terms of permanence of success and
... Show MoreKE Sharquie, AA Noaimi, BO Saleh, ZN Anbar…, Saudi Med J, 2009 - Cited by 13
Background: It had been found that passive smoking may have the same harmful effect as tobacco cigarettes smoking. Aims: This study was conducted to determine the effect of passive smoking on salivary glutathione peroxidase and selenium in relation to dental caries severity. Settings and Design: The sample consisted of 120 children aged 5 years old, classified into four groups according to the number of cigarettes smoked by their fathers daily: Passive smoking children of 5-10 cigarettes, those of 10–15 cigarettes daily, those of 15–20 cigarettes daily and non-passive smoking children of no smokers indoor (the control group). The sample was further classified according to dental caries severity into three groups: mild (DMFS values <4
... Show MoreThe contemporary business environment is witnessing increasing calls for modifications to the traditional cost system, and a trend towards adopting cost management techniques to provide appropriate financial and non-financial information for senior and executive departments, including the Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) technique in question, which classifies costs into fixed and variable to support the decision-making process. Moreover, (RCA) combines two approaches to cost estimation, the first based on activity-based cost accounting (ABC) and the second on the German cost accounting method (GPK). The research aims to provide a conceptual vision for resource consumption accounting, after Considering it as an accounting te
... Show MoreIn the present research a new test rig has been proposed to be suitable for different cyclic loads such as cyclic bending, cyclic torsion, proportional and non proportional loads. In this work the efforts were concentrated on the cyclic bending loads concerning cracked pipes with or without internal pulsing pressure to study crack propagation in small bore pipes (up to 1'') for transverse or inclined cracks. The rig simulates the real service conditions under different stresses by means the least dangerous case will be suggested, so the experiments were considered for copper pipe, and the results have been tabulated and drawn to demonstrate the crack growth behavior as well as to justify the outcomes practically, consequently the durabil
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