Most management research has the inadequate assumption that managers would make decisions in favor of all Stakeholders. In the field of Public School Management in Brazil, even though the National Education Plan points to the importance for greater participation of different publics (target #19), few studies have diagnosed the relationship between stakeholder engagement and organizational performance, notably regarding to value creation measured by actual educational results.
We investigated the relationship between stakeholder engagement (students, parents, teachers, employees and communities) and performance. Public schools’ results were obtained from the Brazilian Education Development Index (Ideb). Questionnaires were collected in the national educational census. Research questions: What are the correlations between stakeholder engagement in public schools and the results obtained by students? Are there differences in the short and long term? Does the number of stakeholders modify the results? Are there any more important stakeholders in this phenomenon?
The major theoretical foundation of this paper is the Stakeholder Theory and, notably, the theory of Stakeholder Engagement. The research proposes hypotheses: the stakeholder engagement level is positively correlated with educational performance, this correlation should be more intense when observing long-term evolution, the results of the correlation between stakeholder engagement and educational performance grow even more the more stakeholders are engaged. The teacher should be the most important stakeholder.
The present study is quantitative using secondary data collected from credible sources. Regarding the epistemological perspective, this research is positivist. The data were provided by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira. This study is based on 44,451 primary schools for the initial educational years and 38,169 schools for the final years in Brazil. Panel regression models with fixed effects were used for the short term and an ordinary least squares model for the long term. We also used analysis of marginal effects after applying the Logit Model.
The results show positive relationships between stakeholder engagement and organizational performance. A logit analysis demonstrates that the probability of a school with all stakeholders engaged appears in the highest quartile is over 44%. The regression coefficients for long-term indicate that Ideb growth is greater among public schools with greater SE. A school that engaged all stakeholders in all three periods considered had on average a gain in the Ideb variation of 0.357 in relation to the other schools, a value that represents robust 45% of the variation.
The results adhere to the Stakeholder Theory main views and its application in Public Management. The conclusion of the present study - innovative in terms of sample extension, method of measuring outcomes and its country of application – both reinforces and extends previous findings in the literature shading new theoretical light. As expressed in both Stakeholder Theory and Education studies, Stakeholder Engagement can have significant impacts on the learning performance in public schools.
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