Exploring New Frontiers through Higher Education and Business Sector Collaboration in the UK: : A Transactional - Relationship Marketing Management Approach

Despite growing interest in higher education and business community collaborations, there is limited understanding on how Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation/Business Development (KEC/BD) professionals manage such partnerships. This paper seeks to address this deficit by examining collaborative practices, activities and interactions between KEC/BD professionals and their Business industry stakeholders using the integrated theoretical lenses of transactional and relationship marketing management. Based on quantitative and qualitative data analyses the results reveal a contribution that expected depth of engagement from business sector partner is a key determinant underpinning the choice of a relationship management approach for higher education and business community collaborations. The results indicate that transactional approach is best suited for low level of engagement and a relational approached for deeper level of engagement. The analysis also led to the identification that interaction and subsequent management of business relationships by universities is ad hoc and disjointed, and KEC/BD professionals are not being used to their full potential in supporting on-going relationships. This dual transactional-relational pathway helps address conceptual limitations inherent in the underlying assumptions of higher education and business sector relationship management models to advance understanding of how KEC/BD professionals manage such complex partnerships.