A new playbook for effective crisis management in higher education.

Unlike other industries, in higher education an institution's most important asset is its reputation. Yet as fundamental as it is, many leaders continue to view managing reputation as dishonest and counterproductive, a suspect process that undermines the very idea of reputation as an organic outcome of reality. When leadership credibility is on the line, though, and an institution's reputation is facing potentially irreparable damage, the concept of reputational risk moves from being nebulous to all too tangible.

In Preventing Crises at Your University, Simon Barker demonstrates how critical it is for colleges and universities to align strategy and values with decision-making during times of crisis. Arguing that leaders must stop considering the discussion of reputational risk as unseemly, he demonstrates that this discussion is in fact a strategic imperative for every leader. Significant reputational damage, Barker asserts, is not the inevitable outcome of a crisis but of a poor response. Defining a new crisis leadership playbook to deal with self-inflicted crises, he also