The integration of quality management in higher education institutions: a systematic literature review

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review showing how the literature on quality management (QM) in higher education (HE) has evolved. As a first contribution, this work presents a systematic breakdown of research in the field of HE quality management. Its second and most innovative contribution is its coverage of the process of introducing quality management into institutions’ global management systems. Theoretically, we believe this second point to be a general trend in the evolution of the quality management literature, and empirically it represents a trend for quality management principles and practices in governance and management systems of higher education institutions (HEIs). The literature was analysed by distinguishing three main levels in HEIs: a process level, an organisational level, and, since our focus is specifically on the field of quality management, a quality management principles level. Overall, this paper concludes that integration at the three levels of analysis is strong. Moreover, we were able to identify a trend towards the development of holistic and comprehensive quality management approaches both in conceptual and empirical research studies.

Keywords:

• quality management
• higher education
• integration
• literature review

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Bjørn Stensaker for welcoming Maria J. Manatos as a visiting researcher at the University of Oslo, where this paper was in part written. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions based on an earlier version of this text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Cláudia S. Sarrico http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4463-8412

Supplementary Material

A complete list of the literature reviewed for this research can be accessed via the supplemental tab on the article's online page [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2015.1050180].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under grant number PEst-OE/CED/UI0757/2012 and grant number EXCL/IVC-PEC/0789/2012. Maria J. Manatos was supported under grant number SFRH/BD/69159/2010.