The Dark Side of Trust: When Stakeholder Pressure Undermines Academic Integrity in International Schools

Abstract

Trust is one of those elements that glue between governance and stakeholders in fee-paying international schools which we should take into account. As we already understand, trust has ever been a positive institutional strength never taking into account the fact that it can be misdirected and thus can even assume a negative direction. This article attempts to attempt to comprehend the extent to which trust can be twisted and can, therefore, be labeled as a negative and not a positive aspect in the international educational environment. Considering a conceptual review of 23 sources (organized in a systematic way) on educational leadership, stakeholder theory, legitimacy, quality assurance and commercialization, this writing argues on a hypothesis that trust itself can shift into the category of a negative glue between school and investors to a far more negativized form whereby there is, as a core element, parents who place financial pressure on schools. The review introduces two conceptual innovations in categorizing the ideas of healthy trust and distorted trust and three most prevalent areas of risk found by the review grade inflation, partiality in admissions and in school progression, and compromised leadership. Our findings revealed that stakeholder satisfaction does not provide an automatic assurance of a financial guarantee in the long-term; this is rather a result of developing inflexible protective barriers in the school environment.