Internal marketing orientation model for evaluation and improvement of school board activities in the Republic of Croatia: Initial empirical verification

Abstract

In this paper, authors analyze the fundamental determinants of internal marketing orientation toward the members of the school boards in the Republic of Croatia, which represent the basis for the school board evaluation and improvement model. It is believed that such an approach might lead to the identification of homogenous school board member groups, which could be further targeted by the internal marketing orientation of the school and its activities. In the empirical part of the paper, the selected segmentation criteria (level of education, previous pedagogical competences, position in the school board and parenting a student, enrolled in the same school) were found to lead toward significant differences in attitudes, related to work and responsibilities of school boards. This finding leads to the preliminary empirical verification of the fundamental determinants of the proposed model, to be further developed by future research. Furthermore, it has been established that the selected segmentation criteria are reflected in the attitudes, related to: evaluation of school board members’ work, internal relationships and pedagogical competences; independence of school board’s decision-making; school board’s relationship with the principal and valuation of the teach-ers’ position in the school. Those areas of school boards’ work and responsibility are identified by the empirical research to represent areas, which need to be included in education and professional-ization programs in Croatia.