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 Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) describes an indoor space condition that the wellbeing and comfortability are provided for the users. Many researchers have highlighted the importance of adopting IEQ criteria, although they are not yet well defined in the Kurdistan region. However, environmental quality is not necessary for the contemporary buildings of the Kurdistan Region, and there is no measurement tool in the Region. This research aims to develop an IEQ assessment tool for the Kurdistan region using Mixed method methodology, both qualitative and quantitative. Therefore, a Delphi Technique was used as a method initially developed as systematic, interactive forecasting on a panel of experts. Thirty-five Delphi C
... Show More
(1)
This paper proposes a new strategy to enhance the performance and accuracy of the Spiral dynamic algorithm (SDA) for use in solving real-world problems by hybridizing the SDA with the Bacterial Foraging optimization algorithm (BFA). The dynamic step size of SDA makes it a useful exploitation approach. However, it has limited exploration throughout the diversification phase, which results in getting trapped at local optima. The optimal initialization position for the SDA algorithm has been determined with the help of the chemotactic strategy of the BFA optimization algorithm, which has been utilized to improve the exploration approach of the SDA. The proposed Hybrid Adaptive Spiral Dynamic Bacterial Foraging (HASDBF)
... Show More
In the task of detecting intrinsic plagiarism, the cases where reference corpus is absent are to be dealt with. This task is entirely based on inconsistencies within a given document. Detection of internal plagiarism has been considered as a classification problem. It can be estimated through taking into consideration self-based information from a given document.
The core contribution of the work proposed in this paper is associated with the document representation. Wherein, the document, also, the disjoint segments generated from it, have been represented as weight vectors demonstrating their main content. Where, for each element in these vectors, its average weight has been considered instead of its frequency.
Th
... Show More
(1)
In this study, a chaotic method is proposed that generates S-boxes similar to AES S-boxes with the help of a private key belonging to
In this study, dynamic encryption techniques are explored as an image cipher method to generate S-boxes similar to AES S-boxes with the help of a private key belonging to the user and enable images to be encrypted or decrypted using S-boxes. This study consists of two stages: the dynamic generation of the S-box method and the encryption-decryption method. S-boxes should have a non-linear structure, and for this reason, K/DSA (Knutt Durstenfeld Shuffle Algorithm), which is one of the pseudo-random techniques, is used to generate S-boxes dynamically. The biggest advantage of this approach is the produ
... Show More
The Diffie-Hellman is a key exchange protocol to provide a way to transfer shared secret keys between two parties, although those parties might never have communicated together. This paper suggested a new way to transfer keys through public or non-secure channels depending on the sent video files over the channel and then extract keys. The proposed method of key generation depends on the video file content by using the entropy value of the video frames. The proposed system solves the weaknesses in the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm, which is MIMA (Man-in-the-Middle attack) and DLA( Discrete logarithm attack). When the method used high definition videos with a vast amount of data, the keys generated with a large number up to 5
... Show More
(24)
(12)
People are comfortable with e-banking services, but they are exposed to a great deal of danger these days due to fraudulent acts such as password hacking and personal information theft. Everything individuals do online relies heavily on passwords. Using a password protects one's identity online, in forums, and through email. Online transactions are vulnerable to identity theft if they do not have a secure password. Internet users with critical statements are vulnerable to various assaults, including the theft and exploitation of user IDs and passwords. This paper introduces novel password encryption by fingerprint and a random number to make each password unique and robust against attacks, with a magnificent time elapsed o
... Show More
(1)
(2)
Recognizing facial expressions and emotions is a basic skill that is learned at an early age and it is important for human social interaction. Facial expressions are one of the most powerful natural and immediate means that humans use to express their feelings and intentions. Therefore, automatic emotion recognition based on facial expressions become an interesting area in research, which had been introduced and applied in many areas such as security, safety health, and human machine interface (HMI). Facial expression recognition transition from controlled environmental conditions and their improvement and succession of recent deep learning approaches from different areas made facial expression representation mostly based on u
... Show More
(4)
Let be a ring. Given two positive integers and , an module is said to be -presented, if there is an exact sequence of -modules with is -generated. A submodule of a right -module is said to be -pure in , if for every -Presented left -module the canonical map is a monomorphism. An -module has the -pure intersection property if the intersection of any two -pure submodules is again -pure. In this paper we give some characterizations, theorems and properties of modules with the -pure intersection property.
In this study, dynamic encryption techniques are explored as an image cipher method to generate S-boxes similar to AES S-boxes with the help of a private key belonging to the user and enable images to be encrypted or decrypted using S-boxes. This study consists of two stages: the dynamic generation of the S-box method and the encryption-decryption method. S-boxes should have a non-linear structure, and for this reason, K/DSA (Knutt Durstenfeld Shuffle Algorithm), which is one of the pseudo-random techniques, is used to generate S-boxes dynamically. The biggest advantage of this approach is the production of the inverted S-box with the S-box. Compared to the methods in the literature, the need to store the S-box is eliminated. Also, the fabr
... Show More