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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Peter and Wendy present universal ideas that exist in all times, despite being written in the beginning of the 20th century. Among the most significant ones is the concept of “home”. The article discusses the essentiality of the idea of “home” where the identity of an individual shapes, and where one’s spiritual, psychological, and physical being develop. It also studies the attitudes of each protagonist towards the concept of ‘home’ based on their understanding of it and according to their gender differences. The characters in both stories tread on the path of perplexity between leaving their homes and returning to them. Peter’s world is the world of imagination while Doro
... Show MoreThe research aims to identify the possibility of applying environmental fines to commercial shops and restaurants to reduce the environmental pollution represented by the wastes generated from them. The research sample was divided into two groups, including the first (20) commercial shops (meat shops and slaughter it, fruits & vegetables, legumes and accessories) and second (30) Restaurant in the city of Baghdad on both sides of Karkh and Rusafa. The quality of the waste was classified into carton, plastic, aluminum, glass, paper, cork and food waste. The study revealed the possibility of applying environmental fines to restaurants and shops to reduce the waste generated from them throughout the year and to apply continuous monitorin
... Show MoreIslamic law has relied on a number of sources in order to denote the rulings issued by them, including what is original and what is sub, and it is known to all scholars, that the Prophet's Sunnah is the second major source after the Koran, which separated the overall and devoted its year and restricted absolute. God Almighty obeyed the owner and his followers, and that his obedience of obedience to God Almighty said: (Who obeys the messenger has obeyed God) (women: 80), and then between the peasant who believes in him and his victory and follow him, he said: (and he said: And the one who was revealed with them were the successful ones (al-A'raf: 157).
It is known that the Sunnah commanded to follow is the
The present work is qualitative descriptive. It aims to examine the idiosyncratic schema when deciphering the selected violence-based panel from Nasser Ibrahim’s caricatures. The researchers accordingly adopted part of Sharifian’s (2011) Cultural Schema model, particularly that part that is concerned with the examining the micro/idiosyncratic level of understanding. The study has revealed that the participants have not only differed among themselves regarding the way a figure is being denotatively conceptualized, they also highlighted different exact conceptualizations for the same figure, such as: using various adjectives that reflect various levels of intensity, emphasizing the behavioral aspect or the appearance of the figure, ado
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Gas and downhole water sink-assisted gravity drainage (GDWS-AGD) is a new process of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in oil reservoirs underlain by large bottom aquifers. The process is capital intensive as it requires the construction of dual-completed wells for oil production and water drainage and additional multiple vertical gas-injection wells. The costs could be substantially reduced by eliminating the gas-injection wells and using triple-completed multi-functional wells. These wells are dubbed triple-completion-GDWS-AGD (TC-GDWS-AGD). In this work, we design and optimize the TC-GDWS-AGD oil recovery process in a fictitious oil reservoir (Punq-S3) that emulates a real North Sea oil field. The design aims at maximum oil recovery us
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The covid-19 global pandemic has influenced the day-to-day lives of people across the world. One consequence of this has been significant distortion to the subjective speed at which people feel like time is passing. To date, temporal distortions during covid-19 have mainly been studied in Europe. The current study therefore sought to explore experiences of the passage of time in Iraq. An online questionnaire was used to explore the passage of time during the day, week and the 11 months since the first period of covid-19 restrictions were imposed in Iraq. The questionnaire also measured affective and demographic factors, and task-load. The results showed that distortions to the passage of time were widespread in Iraq. Participants co
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The expansion of the social media environment has created its own linguistic realities which involve more colloquial communication and practical employment of language. This research focuses on nominalizations in detail, which are originally formed words that have been changed for a noun role. These nominalizations are examined within the context of Facebook posts. The research aims to discover the various nominalizations used and how often they appear in a large sample of data from Public Facebook Posts Corpora. Computational linguistics opened new fields of study and enabled researchers to study large amounts of data easily, making it easier to identify patterns. Two computational methods of identifying nominalization in a large dataset w
... Show MoreThe aim of present study is to determine the optimum parameters of friction stir welding process and known the most important parameter along with percentage contribution of each parameter which effect on tensile strength and joint efficiency of FS welded joint of dissimilar aluminum alloys AA2024-T3 and AA7075-T73 of 3 mm thick plates by applied specific number of experiments using Taguchi method .AA2024 was placed on the advancing side and AA7075 on the retreating side. FSW was achieved under three different rotation speeds (898, 1200 and 1710) rpm, three different welding speeds (20, 45 and 69) mm\min , three different pin profiles (cylindrical, threaded cylindrical and cone) and tool tilt angle 2◦. Taguchi method w
... Show MoreRoller compacted concrete (RCC) is a concrete compacted by roller compaction. The concrete mixture in its unhardened state must support a roller while being compacted. The aim of this research work was to investigate the behavior and properties of roller compacted concrete when constructed in the laboratory using roller compactor manufactured in local market to simulate the field conditions. The roller compaction was conducts in three stages; each stage has different loading and number of passes of the roller. For the first stage, a load of (24) kg and (5) passes in each direction had been employed. For the second stage, a load of (104) kg and (10) passes in each direction were conducted. Finally, at the third stage, a load of (183) kg a
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