Judgments about organizations: How people representing organizations describe and process impressions of schools

Leonard Paul Duevel, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore how organizational representatives described and processed impressions of a school. Other studies have explained factors leading to ethos, individual credibility, and organizational credibility. While previous work studied the sender, this study focused on the receiver in the communications process. Employees were interviewed from organizations with a stakeholder role in a private international school in Europe. The organizations were stakeholders through payment of school tuition for some employees' children. Data were obtained primarily from fifteen subjects in one of three positions in five organizations. Subjects had diverse international passport and educational backgrounds. Qualitative methods were used to gather and analyze data, and report results. Analysis components were defined by eleven themes that emerged from interviews. The results of eleven analysis components framed the results and the criteria for assessing the way subjects described sources for impressions of the school, their processes for forming these impressions, their judgment of a school, and the relative generalizability of these processes. Subjects described parental feedback as a major source of input for impressions and judgment. Informal methods of gathering feedback were used. Subjects described impressions and judgments of a school through comparison with their own and their children's educational experiences. Subjects solidified first impressions to form later impressions. Impressions were more often based on school visits than on written or other media sources. As subjects moved from first impressions to general impressions and judgment, subjects sought objective input. Judgment was described as a collection of many impressions, but judgment was more often based on concrete evidence rather than subjective impressions. However, subjects described the concrete input from a personal perspective rather than input from objective sources. A school's actions were more important to subjects than a school's stated goals. Subjects described long-term effects of education as the most important input for judging a school from personal and organizational perspectives. Generally, subjects described similar expectations of schools to other organizations. Some subjects suggested models of dissimilar expectations of schools to explain judgment of schools based on common goals. Results were compared with studies in communication and organizational legitimacy.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Hooker, Purdue University.

Subject Area

School administration|Marketing

COinS