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.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common degenerative joint disorder that ultimately results in the progressive destruction of articular cartilage. The occurrence of knee osteoarthritis (OA) increases with obesity and is more common in women compared with men. Thirty patients (20 females, 10 males) clinically diagnosed with knee OA admitted to Baghdad teaching hospital between January 2015-June 2015. Patients between 35-70 year of age and 30 healthy subject (20 females, 10 males) ages matched. The results showed that increased body mass index (BMI) is a well-recognized risk factor for knee osteoarthritis, and the effect of obesity is a stronger predictor of developing knee OA symptoms in women than men. There was also a significant diffe
... Show MoreThe current research aims to determine the intellectual security and the psychological resilience of Secondary school students and how these two variables are related to each other. The study also seeks the extent to which psychological resilience contributes to intellectual security
The research sample consisted of (420) students from the Secondary stage in the Directorate of Education of Baghdad / Rusafa III. Two scales were administered to the participants to collect the needed data. As for the analysis of data, Pearson correlation coefficient, T-test, and the Regression analysis were employed, the results revealed:
- The members of the sample have an intellectual Security.
- The members of the sample have
In this work, the emission spectra and atomic structure of the aluminum target had been studied theoretically using Cowan code. Cowan code was used to calculate the transitions of electrons between atomic configuration interactions using the mathematical method called (Hartree-Fock). The aluminum target can give a good emission spectrum in the XUV region at 10 nm with oscillator strength of 1.82.
The hydrodynamic properties of laser produced plasma (LPP) were investigated for the purpose of creating a light source working in the EUV region. Such a light source is very important for lithography (semiconductor manufacturing). The improved MEDUSA (Med103) code can calculate the plasma hydrodynamic properties (velocity, electron density,
Background: Analysis of human reports and comparison with results of experimental animals indicate that the effects of progesterone on human not analogous to experimental animals fetus, many studies showed that exposure to progesterone during developing of genital tract of human fetus was not teratogenic. Other studies which performed on laboratory animals found association between progesterone administration during gestation and genital malformation. Objectives: to explore the effect of progesterone in 10.2 mg/kg intraperitoneal injection in mice on testis development and anogenital distance. Materials and Methods: ten pregnant mice divided into five mouse control group that injected10. 2mg/kg sesame oil and treated group that injected pro
... Show MoreFingerprint recognition is one among oldest procedures of identification. An important step in automatic fingerprint matching is to mechanically and dependably extract features. The quality of the input fingerprint image has a major impact on the performance of a feature extraction algorithm. The target of this paper is to present a fingerprint recognition technique that utilizes local features for fingerprint representation and matching. The adopted local features have determined: (i) the energy of Haar wavelet subbands, (ii) the normalized of Haar wavelet subbands. Experiments have been made on three completely different sets of features which are used when partitioning the fingerprint into overlapped blocks. Experiments are conducted on
... Show MoreIn this paper, we consider inequalities in which the function is an element of n-th partially order space. Local and Global uniqueness theorem of solutions of the n-the order Partial differential equation Obtained which are applications of Gronwall's inequalities.
European Chemical Bulletin (ISSN 2063-5346) is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original research papers, short communications, and review articles in all areas of chemistry. European Chemical Bulletin has eight sections, namely
In this paper, a compression system with high synthetic architect is introduced, it is based on wavelet transform, polynomial representation and quadtree coding. The bio-orthogonal (tap 9/7) wavelet transform is used to decompose the image signal, and 2D polynomial representation is utilized to prune the existing high scale variation of image signal. Quantization with quadtree coding are followed by shift coding are applied to compress the detail band and the residue part of approximation subband. The test results indicate that the introduced system is simple and fast and it leads to better compression gain in comparison with the case of using first order polynomial approximation.
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