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
These experiments seek to investigate the effects of the fixed variations to the basic box plot on subjects' judgments of the box lengths. The study consists of two experiments, were constructed as an extension to the experiments carried out previously by Hussin, M.M. (1989, 2006). Subjects were asked to judge what percentage the shorter represented of the longer length in pairs of box lengths and give an estimate of percentage, one being a standard plot and the other being of a different box length and also varying with respect to other elements such as, box width or whisker length. When he (1989) suggested in the future research points (1, 2), the changing length of the st
... Show MoreThis paper proposes and studies an ecotoxicant system with Lotka-Volterra functional response for predation including prey protective region. The equilibrium points and the stability of this model have been investigated analytically both locally and globally. Finally, numerical simulations and graphical representations have been utilized to support our analytical findings
Buzurgan oil field suffers from the phenomenon of asphaltene precipitation. The serious negatives of this phenomenon are the decrease in production caused by clogging of the pores and decrease in permeability and wettability of the reservoir rocks, in addition to the blockages that occur in the pipeline transporting crude oil. The presence of laboratories in the Iraqi oil companies helped to conduct the necessary experiments, such as gas chromatography (GC) test to identify the components of crude oil and the percentages of each component, These laboratory results consider the main elements in deriving a new equation called modified colloidal instability index (MCII) equation based on a well-known global equation called colloidal in
... Show MoreBuzurgan oil field suffers from the phenomenon of asphaltene precipitation. The serious negatives of this phenomenon are the decrease in production caused by clogging of the pores and decrease in permeability and wettability of the reservoir rocks, in addition to the blockages that occur in the pipeline transporting crude oil. The presence of laboratories in the Iraqi oil companies helped to conduct the necessary experiments, such as gas chromatography (GC) test to identify the components of crude oil and the percentages of each component, These laboratory results consider the main elements in deriving a new equation called modified colloidal instability index (MCII) equation based on a well-known global equation called colloidal instabi
... Show MoreThis study aimed to explore self and public stigma towards mental illness and associated factors among university students from 11 Arabic‐speaking countries. This cross‐sectional study included 4241 university students recruited from Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Syria, Sudan, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. The participants completed three self‐administrative online questionnaires—Demographic Proforma (age, gender, family income, etc.), Peer Mental Health Stigmatization Scale and Mental Health Knowledge Questionnaire. There was a significant difference in the average mean between the 11 countries (
The research study focused on the need to clarify the relationship between the Websites of Iraqi Newspapers and their roles in covering the internal crises in Iraq. The selection of Iraqi websites for the newspapers Al-Zaman and Al-Sabah was adopted as one of the most important media with a wide audience; and as a model of hot news and continuous coverage of those sites since 2003 so far. As a result, this necessitated the emergence of new types of methods of editing and writing news stories related to Iraq.
Consequently, the enormous and rapidly changing amount of Iraq news, the process of preparing and creating news has become a complex industry
... Show MoreBackground: Bone augmentation techniques are commonly employed in medical fields. This biomaterial system must be readily available, easily applicable by minimally-invasive technique and able to release an osteoinductive growth factor. Such a system will be able to engineer new bone formation locally at the site of injection. Hyaluronic acid has osteogenic potential that can be exploited not only for repairing bone defects but also for providing transplantable bone for the reconstruction of a variety of bone defects. The aims of this study were to evaluate the effects of Hyaluronic acid gel on bone healing by immunohistochemical estimation of transforming growth factor -beta 3 in experimental and control groups. Materials and methods: Thirt
... Show MoreThe research is based on the basic idea that companies today are moving towards a new trend towards protecting the environment coupled with the increasing wareness of the pollution damage caused by these companies due to their operations and activities in the environment. The two main reasons that led the researchers to choose this subject is the need to adapt the companies themselves in response to successive developments, The great development was that companies moved from the sole economic responsibility of the business to social responsibility by emphasizing socially responsible profit. The problem of research is the knowledge of the availability of the dimensions of the green processing series in Kirkuk Cement Factory The re
... Show MoreI found that it does not meet some of the requirements, including browsing and organizing structural elements, which is something in which the researcher found a scope for research, and from here she can formulate the problem of her research with the following question: Is there an actual need to develop user interface designs in the websites of Iraqi colleges of fine arts? The research included four chapters (the first chapter - the research problem - the second chapter (theoretical framework), which included three sections, the first is to identify the user interface, the second topic is the structural elements, and the third topic includes the rules of interface design and the dimensions of interaction), as well as the third chapter i
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