Building relationships: Servicescapes and parents of children in publicly funded K-12 schools

Abstract

Despite the seminal research of academics like Grunig on the benefits of mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics, this research does not investigate how human responses to the built environments of organizations can foster relationships with their publics.

Servicescape (Bitner, 1992) research, while not applied to public relations contexts, has been practically studied in a variety of sectors including hospitals, retail stores, and restaurants. Given the desire of schools to build positive relationships with parents to establish partnerships in student success, it follows that servicescape research could lead to an understanding of how school buildings can positively support building relationships between parents and schools, and through this understanding, create more fulfilling working and learning environments for students and staff.

Using the research of Bitner (1992), Mehrabian and Russell (1974), and Grunig and Hon (1999) as a conceptual framework, this study applied servicescape, environmental psychology, and relationship dimension research to public relations. Focusing on developing mutually beneficial relationships, this capstone examined relationships between schools and parents of students enrolled in Kindergarten to grade 12 publicly funded school districts in Ontario.

This study examined how parents perceive schools according to servicescape typologies and their subsequent emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and physiological affects. With these affects in mind, this study explored how parents felt about relationships with schools, and if school servicescapes impacted parents’ assessments of quality relative to the school experience.

The knowledge, skills, and abilities of public relations professionals working in Ontario school districts provided another dimension to this capstone. Public relations professionals’ assessments of the value of servicescapes as a strategy to build mutually beneficial relationships with parent communities brought a real-world public relations practitioners perspective to this capstone.

Using a purposive non-probability sampling of two target populations, this study collected data through an online survey, four focus groups, and six in-depth interviews.

Major findings were that parent participants were affected by school servicescapes. These impacts influenced their assessments of parent relationships with schools. However, this influence was not consistent across all parameters; parents were willing to overlook the school servicescape if they felt their child’s teacher and/or the school was caring and involved.

Public relations professionals appraised servicescapes as a valuable relationship building strategy. They ascertained it would have the most impact if it were implemented as a system-wide program with multi-departmental responsibility.