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.
Cerium oxide (CeO2), or ceria, has gained increasing interest owing to its excellent catalytic applications. Under the framework of density functional theory (DFT), this contribution demonstrates the eect that introducing the element nickel (Ni) into the ceria lattice has on its electronic, structural, and optical characteristics. Electronic density of states (DOSs) analysis shows that Ni integration leads to a shrinkage of Ce 4f states and improvement of Ni 3d states in the bottom of the conduction band. Furthermore, the calculated optical absorption spectra of an Ni-doped CeO2 system shifts towards longer visible light and infrared regions. Results indicate that Ni-doping a CeO2 system would result in a decrease of the band gap. Finally,
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Data generated from modern applications and the internet in healthcare is extensive and rapidly expanding. Therefore, one of the significant success factors for any application is understanding and extracting meaningful information using digital analytics tools. These tools will positively impact the application's performance and handle the challenges that can be faced to create highly consistent, logical, and information-rich summaries. This paper contains three main objectives: First, it provides several analytics methodologies that help to analyze datasets and extract useful information from them as preprocessing steps in any classification model to determine the dataset characteristics. Also, this paper provides a comparative st
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In the present research synthesis and study of biological activity a series of new polymers modified of chitosan with compounds containing azo group. Beginning diazonium salt produced from 3,3'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diamine reacted with concentrated HCl acid and sodium nitrite. The coupling reaction between diazonium salt with substituted aromatic aldehyde to produce Azo derivatives )1-6(. Azo Schiff bases Chitosan )7-12( were synthesized by condensation of Chitosan with Azo derivatives )1-6( in ethanol with some drops of glacial acetic acid. The structural modifications of Chitosan ring (linked to a bioactive azo moiety) were expected to give new derivatives )7-12( with a diverse range of biological functions. These compounds' st
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في البحث الحالي تم تحضير ودراسة النشاط الحيوي لسلسلة من البوليمرات الجديدة المحورة من الكيتوسان مع مركبات تحتوي على مجموعة الآزو. في البداية تم تحضير ملح الديازونيوم من تفاعل 3,3'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diamine مع حامض الهيدروكلوريك المركز ونتريت الصوديوم .ثم تفاعل الازدواج بين ملح الديازونيوم مع الديهايدات اروماتية معوضة لإنتاج مشتقات الازو (1-6). ازو شف بيس كيتوسان((12-7 والتي حضرت من تفاعل الكيتوسان مع مشتقات
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Thermal performance of closed wet cooling tower has been investigated experimentally and theoretically
in this work. The theoretical model based on heat and mass transfer equations and heat and mass transfer balance equations which are established for steady state case. A new small indirect cooling tower was used for conducting experiments. The cooling capacity of cooling tower is 1 kW for an inlet water temperature of 38oC, a water mass velocity 2.3 kg/m2.s and an air wet bulb temperature of 26oC. This study investigates the relationship between saturation efficiency, cooling capacity and coefficient of performance of closed wet cooling tower versus different operating parameters such wet-bulb temperature, variable air-spray water fl
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Primary amide derivatives as histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) are very rare. This paper describes the synthesis of primary amide derivatives (compounds 6 and 7) that have the requirements to be histone deacetylase inhibitors of the zinc-binding type. Both of them exhibited good cytotoxicity against the tested cancer cell lines with much lower cytotoxicity against normal cell line.
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This study has been carried out to evaluate the expression level of beta 2 microglobulin gene on patients infected by hepatitis C virus before and after treatment with interferon. The study included 117 hepatitis C patients comprising as 63 pre-treated patients, the range of age was between 20-65 year with a mean age of 48.12 ± 16.1 and 54 post-treated patients with age range was between 23-63 year with the mean of 46.1 ± 18.1. Also it was found that more than half of patients were located within third and fourth decade i.e. 30-49 year, with a percentage of 52.4% and 55.6 % for pre-treatment and post-treatment patients respectively. Moreover , regarding both groups, males are more than females with the ratio of ( 3.2:1) among p
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