This study focused on presidents of small, private, tuition-dependent institutions who led the institution through a financial turnaround. The purpose of the study was to explore the ways presidents engaged with the key stakeholders of shared governance—the faculty and the board—in implementing the turnaround process and the degree to which these presidents leveraged hard and soft power in pursuing their change agenda. Through a qualitative case study of three institutions, this study investigated the ways each president led a financial turnaround and the manner in which they leveraged power and engaged their stakeholders in the process. The institutions in the study were selected for being similarly sized—fewer than 3,000 students—and undergoing a financial turnaround after the 2008 financial crisis but before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. At each institution, the president who led the turnaround remains the president today. At each institution, the financial turnaround has been maintained for an extended period and shows signs of a long-term positive trajectory. Data for this study were gathered primarily through participant interviews as well as through document analysis.

The study found that in leading a financial turnaround, presidents must successfully engage both their faculty and the board, but that much of this engagement takes place outside of the formal structures of shared governance. Successful presidents invested significant time to build personal relationships with key constituents, which enabled them to use soft power most of the time; they judiciously chose occasions to leverage their structural hard power to pursue their change agenda. These presidents carefully crafted a narrative around change and helped key stakeholders to see their own role in the story of the college’s transformation. The study found that while formal faculty governance did not have a strong role in the agenda to achieve financial turnaround, it could play an important part in institutionalizing that change and integrating it into the narrative and identity of the college.