Belonging in Independent Schools: What it takes to encourage stakeholder belonging and mission alignment

Abstract

Organizational philosophies constitute the heartbeat of any organization. Without mission, vision, or values to serve as guiding lights, organizations can find that their stakeholders struggle to engage with the desired passion or enthusiasm. Organizational socialization describes the process by which stakeholders become embedded in their organizations. The three stages of socialization are: Anticipation, encountering, and acquisition (Feldman, 1976). We analyze these stages further in the literature review of this paper. The questions we answered in this study are: 1) How do schools communicate their mission, vision, and values to various stakeholders? a. hiring new faculty and staff; b admissions and recruitment of new students and families; c. ongoing engagement with students, family, and employees? And 2) What is the relationship between these communication structures and stakeholder perceptions of belonging? Independent schools are no exception to this socializaiton process. Stakeholders at all levels engage in the socialization process, beginning as prospective members of the organization and continuing throughout the entirety of their tenure at a particular school. This study focuses on fourteen independent schools in Nashville, TN, that are currently enrolled as members of the National Association of Independent Schools. These schools mirror the overall makeup of NAIS itself, creating a generalizable sample. This mixed-methods study uses triangulated data from interviews, surveys, and document analyses to draw conclusions about the impact of mission and values communication on the perceptions of belonging among stakeholders. This study yielded a total of eight primary findings. These demonstrate the importance of consistent communication that regularly repeats the mission and values of the school so that stakeholders rarely have the need to question the alignment of a school’s actions with their values. In the current age of political discord, it can often be difficult for schools to clearly describe their alignment and then maintain it, especially when parents and students may not be fully aware of the motivations pertaining to decisions school leaders make. We recommend that NAIS member schools within geographic proximity to one another are encouraged to maintain their individuality as it relates to mission, values, and education approach while encouraging their student population to adjust as necessary. By this we mean that when students and families cease to align with a school’s current vision, or when their needs no longer match the provisions of a school, that networked independent schools can work together to ensure that students remain within the independent school system. For independent schools, networking within proximity also creates the opportunity for schools to adopt similar messaging when responding to external events. Such demonstrations of unity would serve to solidify the marketing strategies of independent schools by ensuring that potential stakeholders all receive similar messaging. We also recommend that NAIS member schools be required to issue two annual surveys to all stakeholders, and submit their responses to NAIS’s data repository. We aim to increase the amount of feedback that schools utilize to regularly assess their communication strategies and the impact. There is still a gap in research available to address the role of staff and employee stakeholders in developing inclusivity among the school community as opposed to the role of parents. We suggest that this research may further inform organizaitonal socialization in terms of regulating the locus of responsibility regarding stakeholders. Additional research may also be needed to address the role of overcommunication in helping to solidify the relationship between stakeholders and organizational leaders.