THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AND SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE PRIVATE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT

Strategic leadership capabilities are needed in the new competitive landscape expected for the 21st century. Human capital and social capital are source of sustainable competitive advantage for organization and, therefore, should be carefully nurtured and developed. Organizations can determine their future business directions based on the developing human capital and social capital through strategic leadership. Therefore, the study seeks to examine the relationship between the strategic leadership and sustainable competitive advantage in the private academic environment, particularly Established Private Universities. The targeted population for this study focused on all the academic staff comprised of 517 working at all Established Private Universities in Iraq founded for the period from 1988-2003. The study used a survey strategy “self-administered questionnaire”, to collect data. The statistic results found that there are positive relationship between the strategic leadership and sustainable competitive advantage. In this study, different aspects of these variables were tested, so as to provide a wider and more comprehensive understanding of the factors that affect Established Private Universities in Iraq. The study also provides practical implications and recommended to study the impacts to the study’s variables.