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Higher education institutions, particularly in the case of public universities, face the challenge of creating more value in an environment of increasing requirements and limitations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation of internal marketing (IM) with employees’ attitudinal outcomes, which aim to stimulate and retain motivated and customer-conscious contact employees.

Survey data of 94 customer-contact employees in a public higher education institution were analysed using partial least squares path modelling to explore and predict key target constructs.

The results demonstrate the relationship between customer-contact employees’ service empathy (SE), institutional IM initiatives and employees’ attitudinal outcomes in the public sector, specifically higher education institutions.

The current study relies on self-reported data and a small sample of customer-contact employees working only on enrolment-related areas. Further studies should be designed for theory confirmation and generalizability of the results.

Top managers in public higher education institutions must encourage organizational identification through IM initiatives, such as well-established internal communication procedures. Academic management should continuously train and retain customer-contact employees that have developed SE and a sense of belonging to the organization. SE must be incorporated in the job descriptions and training of customer-contact employees.

The study contributes to the limited literature on the use of IM and SE in the public sector, specifically higher education institutions.

Las instituciones de educación superior, en particular en el caso de las universidades públicas, se enfrentan al reto de crear más valor en un entorno de necesidades y limitaciones en aumento. El propósito de este estudio es explorar la relación entre el marketing interno y las resultantes actitudes laborales de los empleados. El objetivo del marketing interno es estimular y retener empleados de contacto que estén motivados y sean conscientes de la importancia de los clientes.

Se analizaron datos de 94 empleados de contacto de una institución pública de educación superior utilizando modelos de regresión de cuadrados mínimos parciales para explorar y predecir constructos claves.

Los resultados demuestran la relación entre los siguientes constructos: niveles de empatía de los empleados de contacto, iniciativas institucionales de marketing interno, y las resultantes actitudes de los empleados del sector público, en particular organizaciones en el sector de la educación superior.

El presente estudio se basa en los datos auto informados de una pequeña muestra de empleados de contacto que trabajan sólo en áreas relacionadas con matrícula. Nuevos estudios deberían ser diseñados para la confirmación de la teoría y la generalización de los resultados.

Los altos directivos de las instituciones públicas de educación superior deben fomentar la identificación con la organización a través de iniciativas de marketing interno, tales como procedimientos establecidos de comunicación interna. Los directivos académicos deben continuamente adiestrar y retener a los empleados de contacto que han desarrollado la capacidad de proveer servicios de manera empática y que tienen sentido de pertenencia a la organización. Proveer servicio de manera empática debe ser incorporado en las descripciones de empleo y formación de los empleados de contacto.

El estudio contribuye a la literatura limitada sobre el uso de marketing interno y empatía en los servicios en el sector público, específicamente en las instituciones de educación superior.

Knowledge sharing, the most important process in knowledge management, enables knowledge-intensive organizations to foster innovations and to gain competitiveness. Universities, the best contemporary embodiments of knowledge-intensive organizations, nowadays face fiercer competition in the changing world. Knowledge sharing is the key for academic departments to gain competitive advantages through innovation. However, limited studies examined the relationships between top management support, knowledge sharing and affiliation and trust. Based on the literature review, this study developed a research model which aims to examine the relationship between top management support and knowledge sharing, and the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in eight universities in Hong Kong. Data gathered from 109 professoriate staff (including chairs, professors and [research] associate/assistant professors) were used to test the four hypotheses in the research model with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that top management support has a positive impact on affiliation and trust, and that affiliation and trust also have a positive impact on knowledge sharing. However, this study showed an insignificant linkage between top management support and knowledge sharing. Therefore, this study confirmed the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.

Based on the results, this study provided recommendations on how academic management and knowledge management consultants increase the faculty members’ affiliation and trust, for instance, mentoring, performance appraisal system, social interactions and communication pathways.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature in two ways. First, affiliation and trust are two interplayed elements of team climate that should be considered together. Second, this study validates affiliation and trust as a full mediator between top management support and knowledge sharing.

A fuller understanding of the information search behaviour of prospective students in the digital era is one of the keys to success in university recruitment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate students’ university choice factors in relation to the online environment.

In total, 637 samples from 11 private higher education institutions were collected and tested against assumptions before performing statistical analysis including exploratory factor analysis and mean comparison.

The findings revealed that there are some significant differences in gender and academic discipline in the use of the internet to search for university information. In addition, four constructs of university information were identified that are perceived as important by students in their search behaviour: “university reputation”, “eligibility and affordability”, “teaching and learning” and “university tangibility”. The outcomes of this research provide some noteworthy insights which have numerous strategic digital marketing implications.

While most existing studies have explored types of social media apps or online channels that prospective students use, little research has touched on students’ university choice factors in relation to the online environment. Responding to Constantinides and Zinck Stagno (2011) and Hemsley-Brown et al.’s (2016) call, this paper aims to address this research gap by investigating students’ university information search in relation to the online environment.

This paper aims to provide a parsimonious but rigorous model to assist decision-makers to determine critical factors which can lead to higher graduation rates amongst higher education institution (HEI) participants. It predicts the odds of dropout amongst university students, using HEI data from a developing country. This is used as a basis for a Student Retention Predictive (SRP) Model to inform HEI administrators about predicted risks of attrition amongst cohorts.

A classification tool, the Logistic Regression Model, is fitted to the data set for a particular HEI in a developing country. The model is used to predict significant factors for student dropout and to create a base model for predicted risks by various student demographic variables.

To reduce dropout and to ensure higher graduation rates, the model suggests that variables such as age group, faculty, academic standing and cumulative GPA are significant. These indicative results can drive intervention strategies to improve student retention in HEIs and lessen the gap between graduates and non-graduates, with the goal of reducing socio-economic inequalities in society.

This research employs risk bands (low, medium and high) to classify students at risk of attrition or drop out. This provides invaluable insights to HEI administrators in the development of intervention strategies to reduce dropout and increase graduation rates to impact the wider public policy issue of socio-economic inequities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of data analytics in addressing contemporary challenges and opportunities facing institutions of higher education, with a special emphasis on enrollment management for the example of a college of business administration in a Hispanic-serving four-year institution of higher education.

After reviewing previous research on this subject, the authors propose adding a new stratum to higher education analytics, enrollment management analytics, which uniquely identifies the actions associated with attracting and recruiting students, accounts for institutional differences and leads to students’ successful matriculation at institutions.

The authors demonstrate on the example of a professional college in a four-year institution of higher education how the utilization of modern analytical tools and techniques develop actionable decisions in the students’ recruitment process, which leads to their matriculation.

A definition and a new stratum in higher education analytics are proposed for enrollment management analytics.

The purpose of this study was to apply social exchange and organizational support theories to examine the relationship between mid-level strategic enrollment managers’ perceptions of managerial coaching behaviors enacted by their senior managers and their own reported job engagement, as mediated by perceived organizational support (POS) within the US higher education context.

A quantitative survey-based half-longitudinal design, which used the latent marker variable technique, was conducted with a sponsoring professional organization in the strategic enrollment management (SEM) field in the USA. A total of 301 usable surveys were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results of this study indicate that SEM managers’ job engagement and the perceived managerial coaching behaviors provided to them by their senior managers were positively correlated, and that POS fully mediated this relationship. These findings highlight how coaching behaviors may allow managers to elicit positive emotional responses and, by fostering enhanced POS, ultimately enhance job engagement among their team members.

This study addresses several calls for research on managerial coaching, job engagement and POS in an under-examined higher education context within the human resource development field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which “library value” may be communicated in a university setting through more effective engagement with strategic planning and a broader array of campus partners.

This paper presents a case study of an academic library in which alignment with the university mission and strategic plan and alignment of library assessment efforts with the broader culture of assessment at the university have resulted in positive gains for the library in terms of campus engagement and recognition of library value.

This paper provides insights into successful strategies for improved communication of library value to senior leadership, new investment in library facilities, and enhanced opportunities for collaboration across the university on strategic initiatives including student success, innovation in teaching and scholarship, and community engagement.

This paper provides library leaders with new approaches to engagement with campus partners and senior academic leadership in promoting the library as a strategic resource worthy of investment in the twenty-first century.

This paper aims to describe a multifaceted campus-wide initiative to retain transfer students that was undertaken when it was recognized that their retention rates were lower than those of first-time, full-time students.

The Enhancing Student Experience (ESE) Working Group at the University at Albany (UAlbany) brought together key parties from Student Affairs and academic units, including the University Libraries, and provided an energizing arena in which existing student engagement and retention endeavors were discussed and coordinated, and new initiatives were inspired.

This paper reflects the work of a subcommittee of the ESE group that focused on developing strategies to increase the retention rate of students who transferred to UAlbany, and identifying characteristics of those first-time, full-time students who transferred from UAlbany. The efforts discussed in this paper, which were guided by professional experiences, institutional data and published reports, resulted in a 2 per cent increase in the student retention rate in the past two years.

The data collection and analysis, and the initiatives, are specific to one public research university.

Initiatives undertaken to address the retention of transfer students have begun to have an impact.

The “all-hands-on-deck” approach described in this paper demonstrates how strategic collaborations among the many institutional stakeholders at a public research university were marshalled to have a significant and positive impact on student retention.

Embedded in higher educational settings, work-integrated learning (WIL) is a key reflection to students' perceived employability. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of internal and external perceived employability. The research attempts to test a theoretical model examining the relationships among human capital, work values, career self-management, internal perceived employability and external perceived employability.

Data were collected from 588 students who have internship experience from two self-financing higher education institutions in Hong Kong. We adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed research hypotheses.

Results support the idea that human capital and intrinsic work values are significant antecedents of perceived employability. Furthermore, this relationship is fully mediated by career self-management. The implications of the findings for understanding the process through which psychological variables affect an individual's perceived employability are discussed.

Previous studies have extensively examined the effectiveness of WIL in increasing graduates' employability. However, unclear focus has been given to examine psychological attributes, such as human capital, work values and career self-management in WIL. In addition, few researchers have empirically examined the linkages among human capital, work values, career self-management and employability through internships or WIL experiences. Therefore, to bridge these gaps, the present study examines the effect of human capital, work values and career self-management on students' perceived employability when gaining internships or WIL experiences in a higher education setting.

International students develop perceptions about leadership based on cultural practices in their home country. What is the leadership experience of international students in the United States? This study sought to describe the lived leadership experiences of international graduate students. A total of 17 participants, from 11 different countries were recruited for face-to-face in- depth interviews. The participants were enrolled in a large public university and served in a formal leadership position on campus. Four themes emerged concerning graduate students’ leadership experience with leadership and were categorized as: (1) contextually challenging; (2) essential; (3) task and people oriented, and; (4) rewarding. Recommendations are made for campus personnel and leadership educators who support international students.