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 effect of the tensor term in the Skyrme interaction has been estimated in calculating the static and dynamic nuclear properties in sd and fp-shell model spaces nuclei. The nuclear shell gaps have been studied with different Skyrme parameterizations; Skxta and Skxtb with tensor interaction, SkX, SkM, and SLy4 without tensor interaction, and Skxcsb with consideration of the effect of charge symmetry breaking. We have examined the stability of N = 28 for 42Si and 48Ca. The results showed that the disappearance of the magicity occurs in the shell closure of 42Si. Furthermore, excitation energy, quadrupole deformation, neutron separation energy, pairing energy, and density profile have also been calculated. Quadrupole deformation indicates a
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Environmental Tax is deemed as one of the most important tools that can be used to eliminate the problem of oil –based environment pollution resulted out of oil products processes and this has been significantly approved by the experience in those leading countries in the field of protecting the environment against pollution whereas oil-producing countries which are rather awkward in maintaining the environment such as Iraq , suffer from notorious environmental effects pertaining to oil product processes.
The problem of the research is represented the increased and constant rise in the volume of the environmental pollutants resulted from the processes managed by the intern
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leishmaniasis is a disease of global concern, Leishmania types and distribution rates vary from country to another. For visceral leishmaniasis serum samples were examined by the kala-azar dipstick rapid test. Meanwhile smears were taken from lesions, air dried, fixed and Leishman stained then microscopically examined for amstigote stage in cutaneous leishmaniasis. From April 2014 to April 2015, 150 samples for cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) and 108 serum sample for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) from in and out patients in Pediatric, Azadi Teaching and Kirkuk General Hospitals were examined. The incidence of visceral leishmaniasis was very low (2.7%) comparing to that in cutaneous leishmaniasis (64.6%). No significant differenc
... Show MoreMultiple sclerosis (MS) is one of an autoimmune condition with uncertain etiopathology. According to new data, ABO system had played a role in the development and understanding numerous diseases. Lower level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D3 (25-OHD3) is considered as a risk factor for MS. The aims of this study is to identify the role of blood group distribution on the levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH), 25-OHD3, total calcium, inorganic phosphorus and total magnesium on MS patients. Additionally, we assessed the relation between Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and study parameters in patients. The Study included 107 patients with MS were distributed in to four groups according to their blood group (A, B, AB, and O). Additi
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The current research aims to identify: 1. The level of mathematical construct among the Department of Mathematics students in the colleges of education and basic education. 2. The level of effective mathematical operations in both sides of the brain at the Department of Mathematics students in the colleges of education and basic education. 3. The strength and direction of the correlation between the mathematical construct and effective mathematical operations on both sides of the brain at the Department of Mathematics students in the colleges of Education and Basic Education. To investigate the research objectives, the researcher formulated zero-main hypothesis for each aim and from the same hypothesis, three sub-zero hypotheses are deri
... Show MoreIn this work, results of a mathematical analysis of the role of workpiece preheating in laser keyhole welding were presented. This analysis considered the steady-state welding as well as certain range of boundary conditions over which preheating effect would be indicated. This work is an attempt to interpret the role of preheating to increase welding depth and perform keyhole welding with high quality using physical and thermal properties of steel alloys.
Values are penetrating or interfering in the lives of individuals and groups and are connected to them in the sense of life itself, because they are closely linked to the motives of behavior, hopes and goals, and can be said that values are everything. The concept of values is one of the concepts that have received the attention of researchers from different disciplines. This has resulted in a kind of confusion and variation in use from one specialization to the other, and uses multiple uses within one specialization. Therefore, there is no uniform definition of values because they relate to individuals. Individuals differ in many things, such as perception,
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In general, path-planning problem is one of most important task in the field of robotics. This paper describes the path-planning problem of mobile robot based on various metaheuristic algorithms. The suitable collision free path of a robot must satisfies certain optimization criteria such as feasibility, minimum path length, safety and smoothness and so on. In this research, various three approaches namely, PSO, Firefly and proposed hybrid FFCPSO are applied in static, known environment to solve the global path-planning problem in three cases. The first case used single mobile robot, the second case used three independent mobile robots and the third case applied three follow up mobile robot. Simulation results, whi
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This research aims to study the impact of strategic information systems on the development of intellectual capital in the Public Shareholding Electricity Distribution Company in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. To achieve the objectives of the study, a questionnaire was developed for the purpose of data collection, as the number of valid questionnaires for analysis was about (135), and SPSS and AMOS 0.26 software was used to analyze the collected data. The study found out that the respondents' perceptions of the level of importance of strategic information systems and the level of importance of intellectual capital were high, and that the relational capital has ranked as first, followed by structural capital, and h
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