How can academic institutions preserve their core mission in a deeply polarized environment in which they face crises and compete for external funding, enrollment, and faculty recruitment?

In Relationship Management Strategy in Higher Education, readers are provided a comprehensive framework to address the most pressing challenges facing academia today: the post-2008 demographic cliff, shifting public perceptions, and institutional crises. By integrating robust research from sociology, communication, higher education management, and organizational psychology, this book showcases that applying relationship management and institutional identification can unify internal and external stakeholders, boost institutional reputation, increase enrollment and retention, and secure external funding and donations.

Spanning two strategic sections, the text offers actionable insights into value convergence with faculty, students, and staff, as well as relationship-building with donors, alumni, and corporate partners. Real-world case studies that range from the historical leadership styles at Virginia Tech and Purdue to modern issues and crisis management at USC and Brown University, bring these theoretical concepts to life.

Key features include:

• An analysis of leadership styles that reinforce or shift faculty, student, and alumni identification with an institution.
• Social media strategies aimed at creating digital communities and social capital.
• An exploration of cross-cultural communication to boost international student and alumni networks.
• Online and offline strategies of managing crises and scandals.

Essential reading for university administrators, communication and marketing managers, as well as graduate students in higher education management, this book serves as both a theoretical anchor and a practical guide for securing the future of the modern university.

Roxana D. Maiorescu, PhD, is a Professor at Emerson College, Boston and an expert in communication management in corporate and higher education sectors. She has conducted over 50 research projects that appeared as journal articles, books, book chapters, and national/international conference proceedings. Her research has been published by Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Elsevier, Sage, and Business Expert Press