Cihan University-Erbil Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Applying Knowledge Management Processes to ‎Improve Institutional Performance ‎

Aram H. Massoudi — 2023-01-15

This study aimed to identify the role of knowledge management ‎processes in improving ‎the level of institutional performance in Cihan ‎University- Erbil, Iraq. For the purpose of ‎achieving the study objectives, a hypothesis has been formulated with two sub-‎hypotheses. The study relied on a descriptive analytical approach. The data were collected ‎by a questionnaire distributed randomly to 90 academic staff at Cihan University-Erbil ‎Campus, 74 valid responses were received. The results showed that knowledge ‎management ‎processes play an important role in improving the institutional performance ‎‎level of the institution studied. Also, the processes of ‎generating and storing knowledge ‎show have stronger correlation than the ‎processes of distributing and applying knowledge ‎in improving the institutional ‎performance level in the University. ‎The novelty of this ‏article comes from ‏its results and the set of ‎recommendations that will contribute to ‎raising the level of ‎institutional performance. ‎

Ethical Leadership Role in Job Embeddedness and Job Involvement ‎

Mohammed S. Jami — 2023-01-15

The aim of this article is to verify the relationship between ethical leadership (EL) and job embeddedness (JE) and job involvement (JI) in charity organizations in Erbil province, Iraq. Also, identifying the role of ethical leadership in enhancing job involvement and job embeddedness. The data were collected by questionnaire distributed to 320 staff working at charity organizations in Erbil, Iraq. The data were analyzed by IBM-SPSS 26 to test the hypothesis of the study. The outcome of this article showed a positive relationship between EL and JE and JI. Also, there is a positive effect between the EL and JE. The implication of the study point to the essential role of ethical leadership in changing employees’ attitudes positively toward job involvement and satisfaction.

Factors Influencing Individual’s E-wallet ‎Usage in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Twana T. Sulaiman — 2023-01-22

E-Wallets play a critical role in many ways people do cashless transactions. Technology innovations have made smartphone users carry out many transactions or payments using applications installed on their smartphones. The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted cashless payment awareness in numerous countries, including Iraq. The research objectives are to determine the factors that influence E-wallet usage in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. This study methodology uses a questionnaire distribution based on the structural equation model. Ninety-nine sets of valuable data were collected from lecturers who use the FastPay E-Wallet application at the University of Cihan-Erbil. The collected data have been analyzed using SmartPLS data analysis software. The current study revealed that perceived security, trust, ease of use, and usefulness strongly influence E-Wallet usage. A future study suggests researching different E-Wallet applications since this research only focused on FastPay.

Teaching and Learning Phonetics Obstacles in EFL Classrooms

Huda Y. Abdulwahid — 2023-01-20

This study aims at finding out the main obstacles lecturers face in teaching pronunciation. It also sheds light on the stumbling blocks in pronunciation faced by EFL freshmen students at the departments of English and Translation, faculty of Arts and Letters, Cihan University-Erbil. The students at both departments study Phonetics at first stage over two semesters, so they have encountered different problems. Besides, this study tries to shed light on the main reasons lead to. The instruments used to accomplish this study are mainly two; observation and examining students on the transcription of monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The freshmen are examined verbally and non-verbally on the consonants, short and long vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. Their answers have been analyzed following Sbss. The outcomes of this study reveal that some sounds are difficult to be taught due to their absence in the native language and the difficulty to deliver them to students. Moreover, it figures out which sounds are difficult for students to learn. In addition, this study also tends to pinpoint the reasons behind mispronunciation. The causes include mother tongue interference, demotivation, decontextualization, less trained lecturers, and others.

The Portrayal of Science and Religion in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz

Shwana Q. Perot — 2023-02-10

In their fictional works, James Hilton and Walter Miller draw the readers’ attention to the negative impacts of scientific and technological developments on human civilization and the environment. They portray that Science and technology have become a tool in the hands of world powers for destructing humanity and the natural world. In James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, science and technology are seen accountable for the nuclear wars that caused the annihilation of humanity and the natural world. The novels proclaim that scientists and educated people are a part of nowadays' problems as they are misrepresented by politicians. Thus, in Miller’s novel a worldwide effort begins to kill the scientists and burn all the books and other materials containing scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, a group of monks and religious men preserve the relics of the world’s scientific knowledge in the hope that one day humankind will be ready to use them decently. Moreover, both novels portray religion as an emblem of peace, rebirth, and survival of humanity; it helps science and humanity to recover and survive. This article discusses the role of science and religion as depicted in Lost Horizon and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Deviation as Defamiliarization Technique in Written Igbo Poetry

Chukwuebuka U. Oraegbunam — 2023-02-10

Deviation in the literary parlance occurs when a speaker or writer deviates from the normal rules and standards of a language. By breaking the rule of language, poets create art from the language that a language group is familiar with. Previous studies on written Igbo poetry (WIP) focused mainly on the content of WIP, with little attention paid to the language of the modern Igbo poets (MIP). Consequently, there is a dearth of research on how deviation occurs in African literatures. Therefore, through the lenses of Shklovsky’s defamiliarisation theory, this study examines WIP, with a view to describing the techniques used by MIP in achieving deviation, for the purpose of defamiliarising language in their works. Data consists of twenty poems randomly selected from eleven Igbo poetic texts, written between 1975, when WIP debuted to 2015, a period that marks the fourth decade of its existence. The poems studied were subjected to a qualitative analysis that focuses on the use of language to achieve deviation. Findings show that four types of deviation feature in WIP scene: syntactic, lexical, phonological and graphological. Syntactic deviation is achieved through the use of end-weight, focusing and topicalisation. Lexical deviation is the achieved through the use of coinages, lexical borrowing and dialectal deviation. Only apocope phonological deviation feature in WIP, while graphological deviation is done to ease pronunciation with a view to achieving rhythmic effect.

Managing Logistics Activities for Improving Business Performance

Raad A. Shareef — 2023-02-10

This paper examines the relationships between three logistics activities: customer service, warehouse management, and distribution activity on business performance. The research adopts a quantitative research approach. A survey was utilized to assess managing logistics activities and business performance and evaluate the created research hypotheses. The author tests the hypotheses with a sample in Nawras Company in Erbil with SmartPLS version 4.0 to evaluate and process the data. The results show that the three logistics activities positively related to business performance. The research guides logistics managers in understanding how logistics activities enhance business performance. This research is one of the scholarly works to uncover the logistics activities performed by the company rather than outsourcing logistics activities for enhancing business performance in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Exploring the Strategies of Translating Cultural References in Kurdish Subtitling

Hersh A. Omer — 2023-02-10

The current study investigates the strategies of translating cultural references applied in the Kurdish subtitles of the American movie entitled ‘Scent of a Woman’. This research also determines the parameters that affect the application of translation strategies in the Kurdish subtitles on the movie. In doing so, the English audio scripts (i.e., source text) and their Kurdish subtitles (i.e., target text), were compared and interpreted in accordance with Pedersen’s taxonomy of subtitling strategies and parameters (2011). The results revealed that all the translation strategies proposed by Pedersen (2011) were used in the Kurdish subtitles. However, due to the consideration of the ‘monocultural parameter’, the subtitler most frequently used the strategy of retention in the Kurdish subtitles. On the other hand, he used the strategies of omission and official equivalence least frequently. It is also shown that the parameters affecting the application of subtitling strategies were monocultural, transcultural, infracultural, and polyesemiotics. In sum, the cultural differences between SL and TL made the subtitler adopt justifiable strategies depending on availability of specific parameters.

Customer Satisfaction on Quality of ISO Standard 9126 Services in Electronic Banking in Libya

Qusay H. Al-Salami — 2023-02-25

Despite the availability of some electronic banking (e-banking) services in Libya, these services are still facing difficulties in many ways, they have advantages and disadvantages, and so far, they have not been understood by some customers to get their satisfaction. This research aims to know the extent of customer satisfaction (CS) with e-banking services in Libya through ISO 9126 standards. The research population consisted of all customers of (Al-Wahda) and (Commerce & Development (C&D)) bank in Benghazi city, a random sample of 180 and 207 clients were selected respectively. Research hypotheses have been tested, and we noticed a relationship between the existence of a strong significant correlation between the quality services of e-banking according to quality standards ISO 9126 software and CS among the banks under study. The value of this research comes from the new scientific results to study the impact of the quality of e-banking services on CS in Libyan banks, and its originality lies because of the lack of this research applied to Libyan banks in general and Benghazi city in particular.

Hearing ‎ Testimony in English Law

Wael M. Jalaluldeen — 2023-03-10

This research aims to compare the hearing testimony of English law with hearing testimony in Islamic Sharia. The article uses comparative ‎analytical descriptive method by ‎comparing English law as a basis ‎with Islamic law. ‎The data were collected from secondary data extracted from books, scientific journal, and websites. the result showed that the testimony on hearing is not in place of the incident to be proven, but rather the ‎opinion of the people in this incident. Also, English law defines several types of testimony on hearing, the most important of which ‎are: ‎ Oral testimony on hearing, certificate written on the auscultation, and certification of tolerance through a specific behavior.‎ The reserch provide some recommendations including the adoption of the testimony of tolerance in the Iraqi Evidence Law, in the manner of Islamic ‎Sharia and by proposing a legal article as:‎ It is permissible to accept the testimony of what people hear, in cases of lineage, death, ‎and marriage, and in what the witness did not suffer. Finally, the witness’s testimony is accepted if he is told by two just men, or a man and two ‎women, who he trusts. ‎

Difficulties of Simultaneous Interpreting from ‎Translation Students‏'‏‎ Perspective

Sirvan Aminzadeh — 2023-03-10

The present study is a survey that explored the difficulties of simultaneous interpreting (SI) for translation students. The survey addressed the senior translation students in the Kurdistan Region, asking them about the troubles of SI from English into Kurdish or Arabic in the classrooms. Relying on the available models in interpreting studies reviewed by Pöchhacker (2004), this study assessed the students` difficulties in SI from the linguistic, cultural, cognitive, interactional, and translational aspects. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among the students, covering the issues relevant to the cited dimensions. Sixty respondents participated in the survey, whose responses were statistically analyzed and discussed in this paper. The results revealed that the cognitive issues- i.e., comprehending fast speaking, concentration, memorization, controlling stress, encyclopedic knowledge, and strategic thinking- formed the highest degree of difficulty (22%) for the students. In sum, working on all aspects of SI should be emphasized by the translation teachers in the classroom to pave the way for developing the students` skills and abilities in these respects.

Building an Efficient Model by Using Panel Data

Obaid M. Al-Zawbaee — 2023-03-10

The panel data models have gained great attention because they consider the effect of changing time series and the cross-sectional units. It has a higher number of degrees of freedom and is, therefore, more efficient. Our research aims to build the most efficient model using panel data through comparison among six statistical models and to determine the most efficient model through the mean squares of error (RMSE) and the coefficient of determination (R2). Using the EViews-12 package to apply to two data sets to determine the most efficient model. The more critical findings are that the hypothesis assumed by the research states that the accuracy of the adopted models varies. Furthermore, it was found by building six types of panel data models that the best model is the (Two-way Fixed Effect Model) because it achieves the lowest value of (RMSE) and the largest value of R2.

Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Narrative Method of The Old Man and the Sea

Raad S. Rauf — 2023-04-10

In most of his fictional works and in the line of his previous experience as a journalist and war reporter, Ernest Hemingway developed writing techniques peculiar to him to be followed by many predecessors after him. Among the well-known techniques are the one, in which he called “the iceberg theory.” The present paper concerns itself with analyzing this literary technique used by Hemingway in “The Old Man and the Sea.” This novella, written in 1952, and awarded Nobel Prize 1954 and Pulitzer Prize 1953, achieved a great success
not only in the writer’s career but also in the world of fiction as well. Hemingway’s exceptional use of the iceberg technique renowned the novella among his masterpieces and himself as a world Avant-garde in the fictional sphere. This is due to using a simple economical language. Yet, this simple language is full of symbols, metaphors, similes, allusions, personifications, interior monologues, repetitions, soliloquies, etc. All these devices provide another cognitive approach to this story delivered in a much unsophisticated language. This unique style, though written in prose, once has their sentences broken down they may be read as poetic. The aim of this paper is to trace these elements in a novel approach to reading Hemingway’s this masterpiece.

English Color Idioms and Arabic Color Idioms

Israa B. Azeez — 2023-04-30

This study is an attempt to make a comparative study between Arabic and English regarding color idioms. It tends to make a comparison by shedding light on similarities between Arabic and English regarding Color idioms. Eighteen color idioms have been chosen; ten from English and nine from Arabic. Each idiom has been analyzed literally (dictionary meaning) and non-literally (figurative meaning). The analysis has displayed that both languages share some common connotations and literal meanings for a number of idioms. It has showed some differences as well. It can be drawn that although these languages are aliens, descending from two various origins, yet they share some meanings. Besides, the analysis has explored that some idioms might have more than one meaning depending on the context. As a last point, the meaning of these color idioms may differ according to culture, language, customs and traditions, religion, and situations.

Employee Perception of Ethical Corporate Social Responsibility on Organizational Performance

Raad A. Shareef — 2023-05-20

This study's purpose is to find out how perceived ethical corporate social responsibility (ECSR) and organisational performance are related, specifically through the use of employees’ innovative work behaviour (IWB) as a mediating mechanism that is conditional (i.e., moderator) upon intellectual capital. Employees in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq's services industry, such as those working for hotels, banks, real estate, and property organisations, were given questionnaires through a simple random sample approach. The final sample used for the study had 172 responses, and the achieved response rate was 78.2 percent. The research showed that workers’ IWB mediates the association between perceived ECSR and organisational performance. The outcomes also lend credibility to the argument that ECSR interacts with the intellectual capital to influence employees’ IWB, which impacts organisational performance. This paper is one of the few studies examining the effects of ECSR, intellectual capital, and employees’ IWB on organisational performance.

The Role of Workplace Enviousness on Individual Productivity and Organizational Behavior

Qusay H. ‎Al-Salami — 2023-06-05

As a result of its negative consequences for college academics, workplace envy is one of the important areas to study and investigate its results. Thus, this study attempts to find out individuals’ productivity affected by envy in the workplace (CWBI) and organizational citizenship behavior directly benefi ts individuals (OCBI) in the context of Iraqi colleges. A survey was conducted among the lecturers at Baghdad University’s colleges in Iraq, with 182 lecturers representing a response rate of 50%. The researcher used two-step approach with partial least squares-structural equation modeling by Smart PLS to test the hypotheses. As anticipated, the research findings point that workplace envy positively influenced CWBI (accepting H1). Furthermore, results indicated that workplace envy negatively influenced OCBI (accepting H2). The results of this research have various implications for colleges in general and Iraqi colleges in particular. The scientific impact that the results of the present study will contribute to practitioners is demonstrated by highlighting the factors that lead to reducing CWBI and strengthening OCBI in colleges. To enhance the OCBI and minimize the CWBI in colleges, it is advised that the management should encourage academic cooperation and create a work environment suitable for the academics. This can be achieved by forming research teams to work on joint scientific projects and by allowing qualified academics to participate in teaching, supervising postgraduate students, and discussion committees. Providing positive organizational support can motivate the academics to perform better, exhibit responsible behavior, and become productive members of the college community.