Quality as Fashion: Exploring the Translation of a Management Idea into Higher Education

Abstract

Stimulated through supranational and international organisations such as the EU and the OECD, picked up and implemented by national governments in various parts of the world, and with an array of new organisations supporting quality both internationally (e.g. the European Foundation for Management Development) and nationally (e.g. intermediate evaluation agencies), the concept of quality has been one of the most dominating and influential ‘meta-ideas’ globally over the last 20 years, invading both the private and the public sector (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 1996; see also Czarniawska and Sevón 1996). In the mid-1990s, US observers Cameron and Whetten (1996: 265) even argued that the concept of quality had actually replaced effectiveness as the central organisation-level variable in higher education: A fundamental shift has occurred recently in the literature of higher education. This shift has been more gradual and less dramatic than it has been in the broader organisational studies literature, but it has been significant nevertheless. It is a shift away from considerations of the construct of effectiveness to describe organisational performance in institutions of higher education and toward considerations of the construct of quality. Quality has begun to replace effectiveness as a central organisation-level variable in higher education. With a few noticeable exceptions, effectiveness has largely been abandoned and quality has become the pre-eminent construct.