Conceptualising ‘quality work’ in higher education

ABSTRACT

The issue of quality enhancement within higher education has attracted considerable research interest and the article suggest that managerial and cultural approaches have thus far dominated the literature in the field. While acknowledging the importance of both management and culture, the article argues for the relevance of ‘quality work’ as a concept to better understand the processes involved in quality enhancement. By advocating that a stronger focus should be given on analysing practices, the article underlines the role of individual actors and their actions for understanding the foundations related to both quality maintenance and enhancement, as well as the research needed to empirically investigate these processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education quality
• quality work
• institutional work
• organisational practices

Acknowledgements

Research was conducted in the framework of the project ‘Quality in Norwegian Higher Education: Pathways, practices and processes’. The authors are indebted to the project group for discussions during the project that have had an important role in facilitating this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Research was conducted in the framework of the project ‘Quality in Norwegian Higher Education: Pathways, practices and processes’, funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant number 237960).