Undisclosed desires: quality managers’ normative notions regarding the implementation of quality management

Abstract

Following decades of quality management featuring in higher education settings, questions regarding its implementation, impact and outcomes remain. Indeed, leaving aside anecdotal case studies and value-laden documentaries of best practice, current research still knows very little about the implementation of quality management in teaching and learning within higher education institutions. Referring to data collected from German higher education institutions in which a quality management department or functional equivalent was present, this article theorises and provides evidence for the supposition that the implementation of quality management follows two implicit logics. Specifically, it tends either towards the logic of appropriateness or, contrastingly, towards the logic of consequentialism. This study’s results also suggest that quality managers’ socialisation is related to these logics and that it influences their views on quality management in teaching and learning.