1) The document discusses the relationship between organizational culture in higher education institutions and external quality assurance. 2) It analyzes the assumptions that organizational culture is homogenous and can be easily manipulated, while external quality assurance is unproblematic and accepted without question. 3) The analysis uses frameworks to understand organizational culture and the multiple roles that external quality assurance can play in control, empowerment, transformation and the state. 4) It concludes that organizational cultures are complex and multidimensional while external quality assurance also has layers of intent, and that fundamental change depends on elevating a transformative culture and agenda.

1. Authentic academic quality
Reconciling organisational culture and external quality assurance

2. Authentic academic quality:
Reconciling organisational culture and
external quality assurance.
Paper presented OECD IMHE General Conference
17-19 September 2012, Paris
Dr Dhaya Naidoo
Prof N Themba Mosia

3. EQA and organisational culture assumptions
EQA
Improved
HE
quality
OC

4. Traditional notions of organisational culture
• Homogenous, unitary and centred around shared
values and could therefore easily be manipulated
(usually from the top by management)
• An organisational culture that is amenable to change
would be more receptive to the introduction of formal
internal and external quality-assurance
structures, systems and instruments,

5. Taken-for-granted assumptions of EQA
• EQA unproblematic technology accepted without
question by higher education institutions (HEI)
• Premised upon the laudable aim of improving
the quality of those institutions.
• Motivated by a public-good rationale to
improve the quality of those institutions
• Multiple beneficiaries
• Peer-driven, objective assessment of the
institutions’ quality arrangements

6. Analysis
• Philosophical, conceptual and methodological
controversies and contestations surrounding both
constructs
• A three-dimensional model, Tierney (1988) cultural
framework, modified cultures of the academy of
Bergquist and Pawlak (2007) and adapted four
sociological perspectives of Burrell and Morgan (1979)
underpinned analysis

7. Emerging views of organisational culture
• Multiple cultures exists simultaneously
• Managerial
• Collegial
• Political
• Transformational
• Fluid membership
• Driven by issues rather than demographic or
occupational categories

8. Multiple roles of EQA
• EQA as an agent of:
• Control
• Empowerment
• Transformation
• State
• All four roles exist explicitly and tacitly

9. Organisational culture and external quality
assurance
Managerial
culture
Transformative
Political Culture
culture
Control
Collegial culture Empowerment
Transformation
State

10. Conclusions
• Organisation cultures ephemeral than
concrete, multidimensional than singular, characterised
simultaneously by conflict, consensus and indifference and in
a constant state of flux
• EQA multi-dimensional with several layers of stated and
unstated intents despite being championed by a
democratising and public-good rhetoric
• Fundamental and enduring change in higher education is
largely contingent on the elevation of a transformative
organisational culture and the transformation agenda of
external quality assurance.