quality assurance in uk higher education- issues of trust, control, professional autonomy

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Quality Assurance in UK Higher Education: Issues of Trust, Control, Professional Autonomyand AccountabilityAuthor(s): Andreas HoechtSource: Higher Education, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Jun., 2006), pp. 541-563Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29734995 .Accessed: 26/12/2010 16:11

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Higher Education (2006) 51: 541-563 ? Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/sl0734-004-2533-2

Quality assurance in UK higher education: Issues of trust,control, professional autonomy and accountability

ANDREAS HOECHTPortsmouth Business School, University of Portsmouth, Richmond Building, Portland

Street, Portsmouth POl 3DE, UK (E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. This article explores the issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and

accountability in higher education quality assurance in the UK. The main part of this

article is conceptual, but it includes results from semi-structured interviews with academic

staff that were conducted at two "new university" business schools. Both institutions are

broadly similar in their key characteristics and have experienced a transformation to

university status in the early 1990s. The article argues that there has been a change from

informal "light-touch" quality control systems based on local practices and a significantamount of trust and professional autonomy in the early 1990s to a highly prescribed

process of audit-based quality control today. The article argues that accountability and

transparency are important principles that academics should wholeheartedly embrace,

but that the audit format adopted in the UK introduces a one-way accountability and

provides "rituals of verification" (Power 1997) instead of fostering trust, has highopportunity costs and may well be detrimental to innovative teaching and learning.

Keywords: accountability, control, legitimacy, professional autonomy, professional

project, quality assurance, trust.

Introduction

Not many academics will dispute that the quality of teaching in highereducation (HE) is an important issue, but many colleagues would arguethat the type of quality management currently established comes with

high opportunity costs and will not necessarily achieve real improve?ments in teaching and learning (Morley 2003). Most will say that theymake great efforts to be good teachers to their students, but manycontend that the new quality management regime at UK universities

reduces their professional autonomy and academic freedom and that

these were key factors for their original career choice to become uni?versity lecturers. These are real concerns and they are shared in the

wider academic community in the UK and elsewhere1.

However, itmay be too easy to juxtapose an ideal model of university

teaching where lecturers are expected and trusted to teach to the best of


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542 ANDREAS HOECHT

their abilities, agree curricula with their peers and are only subject to alight-touch monitoring by education managers to what some believe to

be an emerging near-Orwellian, Total Quality Management-inspired

(TQM) quality system in HE, where every decision has to comply with a

rigid predetermined TQM-type format of mechanistic performance

targets and where documented process accountability replaces the questfor real teaching quality2. Quite a number of academic writers are

furious about a perceived loss of autonomy and purpose.A recently published special issue of Critical Perspectives on

Accounting (2002) entitled "The University in the New Corporate World"marshals a Habermasian critical theory perspective to argue that the

academic lifeworld, traditionally shaped by peer processes, academic

freedom and the pursuit of knowledge3, has been colonised by a (new)

public sector managerialism4. The colonisation of the academic lifeworld

is diagnosed here as being at the heart of a commodification of students'

educational experience and as the prime cause that prevents universities

form carrying out their social responsibilities (Dillard 2002; Sing 2002).Due to managerialist initiatives such as TQM and a narrow focus on

business efficiency and effectiveness, students are constituted as con?sumers and the public good character of university education5 is abol?

ished (Lawrence and Sharma 2002).It is very tempting to agree with this analysis as itmakes many valid

points. But any critical theory analysis should at least be honest enoughto probe into the possibility of bias based on its own personal interests

being at stake. The introduction of quality management in university

teaching is accompanied by a legitimising discourse referring to the

principles of accountability, transparency and good service. Of course,

such a discourse may just be used to disguise the control nature of thequality regime imposed on the university sector. But before we dismiss it

as propaganda, we should probe deeper into the issues of accountability,

professional autonomy and trust in both the traditional and the new

quality management-controlled6 system of university teaching. We justneed to think of the relationship between doctoral students and their

supervisors7 or the dependent position of junior research staff to realise

that the traditional university system does not offer an ideal-type aca?

demic lifeworld for all of its members. Universities need accountability,

transparency and rights for its "consumers". The question is, however,whether the actual quality management can provide the type of

accountability and transparency that is required.In the next section, I will put the quality reforms of the UK higher

education sector into context by discussing accountability, professional


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QUALITY ASSURANCE IN UK HIGHER EDUCATION 543

autonomy and trust. I will then discuss the nature of quality manage?ment in HE and its impact on the professional autonomy of academics.

I will argue that the inability to pursue a professional project goes a long

way in explaining why academics have resigned to the current quality

management regime without much resistance. The article will proceedwith a discussion of TQM and whether it can be applied to the HEsector. I will highlight the difference between quality systems designedfor management control and quality systems designed for learning and

innovation. Unfortunately, the audit-based quality assurance currently

operated in the UK does not appear to be suited for fostering learningand innovation. In the fifth section of this article, I will present results

from a research project on trust and control in HE quality management.The article concludes with a suggestion for HE policy makers to engagein a proper debate about how teaching quality can be achieved without

undermining the trust and the professional autonomy of academics.

Auditing, accountability and trust

In the 1990s, in response to the fall of the Soviet political system and the

transformation of Eastern European countries to market economies,

accountability8 as a principle of good governance has been (re) dis?

covered and highlighted by international organizations such as the IMF

and the World Bank (World Bank 1992). Accountable government and

accountable societal and political institutions have been recommended

as decisive factors for the transition to market economies and

the development of democratic political systems. The concern for

accountable government is closely linked to the (re) discovery of theimportance of an active, participating civil society for building imper?sonal trust between citizens and their public institutions (Sztompka

1993; Hyden 1997). Active civil societies are expected to press for and to

be fostered by accountable government. The rediscovery of political

accountability has, however, not been limited to transition economies,but has become a key concern for the management of economic and

political life globally. Accountability as a principle is now well estab?

lished and generally acknowledged as highly desirable.

Power(1994)

haspublished

on the rise of the auditsociety

and has

traced the spread of auditing as a technique from financial accounting to

many more societal and political applications. Auditing has been

increasingly seen as an instrument that can be used to make institutions

at least formally more accountable to their stakeholders. It also provides


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544 ANDREAS HOECHT

the impression of certainty and control in a world where risks areincreasingly perceived by a public who no longer puts blind trust into

societal institutions and has become increasingly sceptical about the role

of experts and professionals and their advice and judgement (Beck 1992).The spread of auditing might not solve the problem of impersonal trust9

in complex societies and in the end it may merely provide "rituals of

verification" (Power 1997). But control and assurance techniques like

auditing can provide a temporary sense of certainty. This point is well

made by Shapiro (1987). She argues convincingly that the problem that

societies have in controlling trust relationships that are not embedded inpersonal relations cannot be solved by installing "guardians of imper?sonal trust". The problem of agent fidelity is then simply transferred to a

higher level. Shapiro asks: Who guards the guardians? Her answer is:

trust does (Shapiro 1987, p. 649). "In complex societies in which agency

relationships are indispensable, opportunities for agent abuse sometimes

irresistible, and the ability to specify and enforce substantive norms

governing the outcomes of agency action nearly impossible, a spirallingevolution of procedural norms, structural constraints and insurance-like

arrangements, each building on the former seems inevitable. One of theironies of trust is that we frequently protect it and respond to its failures

by bestowing even more trust. In the jargon of investment, we sometimes

throw good money after bad" (Shapiro 1987, p. 649).

Auditing plays a key role in this trust dilemma. It provides the

impression of being well informed and not being subject to a grossinformation asymmetry; it appears that the agent's performance is

accessible to the principal's scrutiny10 and that the principal has the

means to punish and deter agent malfeasance, all of which are key

features of personalized social control. But, as we have seen, it does notreally solve the trust problem and offers only a limited amount of

control. Power (1994, p. 19) argues that

audit has become the control of control where what is being assured

is the quality of the control system systems rather than the quality of

the first order operations. He concludes that in such a context

accountability is discharged by demonstrating the existence of such

systems of control, not by demonstrating good teaching, caring,

manufacturing or banking (Power 1994, p. 19).

So why is auditing and the accountability it appears to provide so much

in demand, in particular in the public sector? One reason may be that it

is ideally suited to serve a legitimation need of governments. Faced with

an erosion of generalised trust, governments can respond by making


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their own subordinate public institutions more accountable. In doing so,they can act as the guardians of the public interest, distract form any

deficiency they may have in terms of their own accountability and gainbetter control over their subordinate and dependent institutions. Some

writers see auditing as a powerful "political technology" and part of a

Foucaultian "neo-liberal governmentality" project (Shore and Wright

2000, p. 61). They argue that "the key to this system of governmentalitylies in inculcating new norms and values by which external regulatory

mechanisms transform the conduct of organizations and individuals in

their capacity as 'self-actualising' agents so as to achieve politicalobjectives through 'action at a distance' (Miller and Rose 1990, p. 1)"

(Shore and Wright 2000, p. 61; reference to Miller and Rose included in

quoted source).Seen from a more traditional political science perspective, formalised

accountability via auditing offers a number of advantages: its reportingformat promotes bureaucratic formal rationality against the substantive

rationality of professional groups and their codified abstract knowledge,it makes governments appear to act for and on behalf of the public in

making inaccessible institutions more transparent and accountable, and,by doing so, creates the impression of certainty, control and "accessi?

bility" in an increasingly uncertain world, where individuals often feel

powerless and exposed when they lack the knowledge to see through the

practices of public institutions and at the same time are no longer

prepared to trust professional "experts".

HE-quality management and the unsuccessful professional project

of academics

The introduction of quality management into HE teaching and research

has been a global phenomenon (Harvey and Knight 1996; Kells 1992).For the UK and its traditional two-tier HE system, it could be arguedthat quality management reaches back as far as the establishment of the

Council for National Academic Awards to oversee the polytechnicsector in the 1960s. In other European countries such as France and the

Netherlands, systematic quality management initiatives were introduced

in the 1980s (van Vught and Westerheijden 1993; Thune 1998)11. Thedevelopment of quality assurance in the UK is well documented in the

education literature and appears to be rather more complex and less

linear in its development than summarised by Morley (2003) and Shoreand Wright (2000) who suggest a largely linear development of quality


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546 ANDREAS HOECHT

management has taken place from a quality control based on inspectionand assessment of teaching performance to a TQM inspired qualityassurance and enhancement system. In the latter, audits are used as the

key instrument for probing into the institutions' own self-declared aims

and objectives and the procedures and regulatory mechanisms in placefor their achievement. Harvey and Knight (1996) identify a common

trend in HE quality assurance towards external quality monitoringacross all types of HE systems that combines three basic elements: self

assessment, peer evaluation (mostly organised as institutional visits) and

the use of performance indicators. They maintain that external qualitymonitoring systems should be seen as results of pragmatic responses to

government mandates and are therefore constantly evolving and proneto change rapidly. Notwithstanding these changes, they see a clear

convergence to a dominant accountability-led quality assurance

approach that provides HE institutions with some degree of autonomyin return for being quality-audited.

According to Morley (2003) and Shore and Wright (2000), auditbased quality regimes are based on a culture of commitment to best

service to clients and a quest for its enhancement, which, at first sight,might appear to be voluntary and based on conviction12. It refers to

values that have a broad universal appeal, such as accountability,

transparency and good teaching. Commitment to embrace a policy

presupposes some degree of choice and participation in a relatively free

debate firstly on values and objectives and secondly on the best way to

achieve shared objectives. It is easy to see that this is not happening in

UK HE quality management. The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)does not appear to be involved in a consultative open debate about

its policy-making and policy-implementation. Indeed, there is someevidence to the contrary (Shore and Wright 2000; Morley 2003).

Accountability in UK HE quality management appears to be a one-way

street, where policy goalposts can be shifted at short notice without

consultation and some institutions are better able to defend their

interests than others (Morley 2003, pp. 111-122). Universities have a

limited choice. Their student recruitment ability and financial position is

highly dependent on the quality score they achieve in quality audits.

Government education policy-makers and the QAA control the dis?

course on quality and directly and indirectly decide on the funding ofuniversities. The quality discourse emphasizes commitment, self

improvement and reflexivity. It requires academics and university

managers "to present themselves in a language that quality assessors

understand and value. Producing the right kind of optimistic and


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promotional self-description in mission statements, vision statements,and self-assessment documents incorporates self-subversion and ritual?

istic recitation and reproduction. It implies a lack of ideological control

over the task" (Morley 2003, p. 70)13. Morley uses the term of "coun?

terfeit reflexivity" to describe how academics are forced to presentthemselves in the language and discourse of quality assessors. If this

assessment is correct, the resultant loss in authenticity is likely to lead to

alienation and job dissatisfaction14. This interpretation, however, does

not sit comfortably with the Foucoultian neo-liberal governmentality

interpretation referred to above. Shore and Wright (2000, p. 61) contendthat the "the key to this system of governmentality lies in inculcating

new norms and values by which external regulatory mechanisms

transform the conduct of organizations and individuals in their capacityas 'self-actualising agents' so as to achieve political objectives through'action at a distance' (Miller and Rose 1990, p. 1)"

It is hard to see how self-actualisation should be reconcilable with

counterfeit reflexivity. May be a less all-encompassing political science

perspective on power and power asymmetries between different groups

is better suited to explain the tensions between HE policy-makers anduniversities: national policy-makers control the discourse, have the

power and resources to reward and to sanction and universities and

academics are responding to this encroachment on their professional

autonomy rather than being part of a governmentality project. Their

ability to resist is largely dependent on their ability to pursue a pro?fessional project.

It is an interesting question to ask ourselves whether we should

regard ourselves as professionals. If we use the professional project

model for the analysis of the professions (MacDonald 1995), we mayhave to doubt our own position. To qualify as a profession, a groupwould have to be able and willing to pursue a strategy of social closure

that entails striving for a legal monopoly for its services from the state

and to pursue a quest for high status and respectability in the social

order. To achieve this, the group will need to establish a controllinginfluence over the nature and the provision of its knowledge and have

the ability to gain trust and respect in society for the role it plays in it,for instance by being seen as advocating universal principles for the

goodof

societyas a

whole. Do academicsas a

generic group matchthese requirements? Well, to start with, if they are not doctors, lawyers

or accountants and therefore members of a profession by training al?

ready, many of them have only one potential employer group, state

(funding) dependent universities and, unless their subjects need


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548 ANDREAS HOECHT

accreditation from established professional bodies, the employers arerelatively free to decide what qualifications they demand for givingthem a post as an academic. In the UK, there are trade unions for

academics, but not a professional body representing academics as

a whole, and there are bodies representing academic managers (forinstance vice chancellors), but the only attempt to establish a profes?sional body for university academics at large in recent years came from

the government itself trying to achieve formalisation and more control

over teaching qualifications requirements with the establishment of the

Institute of Learning and Teaching.It can be argued that at least in the UK, without a professional body

of their own and without real control over the nature of their knowl?

edge, academics are vulnerable to redefinitions of their purpose by their

monopoly employers. This may on the one hand go some way in

explaining why it is so easy for the government to redefine what HE is

about15, for instance by moving away from its universal role for the

general good of society to narrow economic goals such as industry

relevance, knowledge transfer and direct furtherance of economic

growth and on the other hand may help to explain why academics are soupset when their role definitions and self-images get overrun so quicklyand easily. The role definitions of universities and academics are, after

all, part of the fragile and incomplete attempt to achieve social closure

by trying to achieve respectability in the social order without being

subject to non-universal, instrumental job tasks.

One could speculate that academics as a whole (and at least in the

UK) are far form being a group that has significant expert power which

it can use as an instrument to defend itself successfully against

encroachment of its professional autonomy by New Public Manage?ment including HE teaching quality management. The reaction then to

government quality initiatives has been largely accommodating and

passive.

TQM in HE teaching: A clash of principal assumptions and the difference

between quality16 management for learning and quality managementfor control

TQM has its origins in the manufacturing sector. It was pioneered in

Japanese manufacturing and seized upon by US firms in their quest to

gain back lost ground against their (Japanese) competitors. The TQM

techniques were originally designed to improve the transformation of


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raw materials into finished goods: a reduction in the variation in pro?duction processes was sought in order to improve the quality of product

output (Taguchi et al. 1989). TQM rests on a number of principles.Continuous improvement, customer focus and integrated management

systems are believed to be at the heart of the TQM "philosophy". It

needs strong stakeholder support and extensive organisational inter?

ventions to be successful. While there is empirical evidence that TQMhas often led to improvements in the manufacturing sector, its record in

service organisations is more doubtful (Jauch and Orwig 1997, p. 285).

Some proponents have, however, claimed TQM successes in the busi?ness and general administration support functions of (US) universities

and this has led to pressures for the adoption of TQM in HE teachingand research itself17. Jauch and Orwig (1997) explore the degree of

match between the underlying assumptions of TQM and the ones

operating in HE. They conclude that "the unstated assumptions of the

TQM model are... antithetical to the assumptions operating in HE"

(Jauch and Orwig 1997, p. 280). Their conclusion ismainly based on the

clash of three TQM principles with the essence of HE teaching pro?

cess18. Firstly, TQM demands a reduction of variability in the "prod?uct" transformation process, in this case teaching approaches, and this

clashes with a learning model of education that requires active

involvement of the learner in the education process and a variation of

teaching styles. Secondly, TQM emphasises customer focus, but Jauch

and Orwig argue that in HE it is difficult to determine who the cus?

tomers really are: students, employers, taxpayers or society at large?Jauch and Orwig argue that these customer groups have different ideas

about education quality, sometimes have conflicting interests and often

don't know what the quality is that they are expecting to get. Studentsmay wish to maximise degree results by choosing the easiest courses,

employers may favour short-term relevance of knowledge over longerterm intellectual skills and taxpayers may be mainly interested in

shortening the duration of university study. Thirdly, TQM is based on

the assumption that employees will share the quality "philosophy" and

will willingly participate and be empowered by TQM to contribute to its

implementation. Jauch and Orwig stress that TQM will not be perceivedas empowerment by academics as they are already empowered in keyareas

of the "production process" suchas

curriculum design (and standto loose out rather than gain) and that academic culture is averse to

management control. Their overall conclusion is then that "the unstated

assumptions of the TQM model are .. .antithetical to the assumptions

operating in HE" (Jauch and Orwig 1997, p. 280).19


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550 ANDREAS HOECHT

According to Sitkin and Sutcliffe (1994, p. 540), organizationaleffectiveness depends on the capacity to balance the conflicting goals of

stability and reliability with the goals of exploration and innovation.

Early versions of quality control systems in industry were based on a

cybernetic model that allows for first order but not for second order

learning. First order learning concerns more effectively exploitingfamiliar skills in addressing known problems, whereas second order

learning concerns the exploration of the unknown and the pursuit of

novel solutions (Argyris and Schoen 1978). One would hope that uni?

versities are organisations where learning and experimentation areimportant. Sitkin and Sutcliffe (1994) compare the appropriate design

principles and organisational practices for total quality learning and

total quality control. Total quality learning crucially depends on

incentives for innovation, leadership support for independent thinkingand taking calculated risks as well as evaluation through general values

and judgement rather than narrow performance feedback and evalua?

tion through precise standards. A key factor for total quality learning is

the preservation of individual autonomy. It really is possible that quality

management in HE need not be as intrusive and control-focused as thecurrent systems in place at many UK universities. There are alternatives.

Any quality assurance or quality control system relies on trusting

employees to some considerable extent as no system is able to achieve

constant supervision. Control-based quality systems, however, can

undermine the intrinsic motivation of the very people that deliver the

service quality so desired. Controlling someone's behaviour is a one?

sided activity that reduces the autonomy of the controlled who will

normally only behave as expected as long as they believe that the con?

troller is able to monitor their behaviour and has credible sanctions tomake them behave in the desired way (Hoecht 2004). Trust, on the other

hand, can be able to create mutual commitment between the trustor and

the trustee, involves a mutual learning process and is future-directed. If

trust is extended from dyadic into peer relationships, it can become a

powerful means of social control based on individuals' desire not to

disappoint their peers and not to face the threat of becoming an outsider

to their peer group20. As a consequence, well-functioning trust-based

quality systems can be expected to be more effective as they allow for

savingson

monitoring and supervision costs, and alsomore

innovativeand improvement-oriented in so far as they stimulate the intrinsic

motivation of the trusted individuals. With all the above in mind, one

would hope for a more open debate about quality assurance between

policy-makers and academics in the mutual interest of both groups.


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Results from empirical research at two UK university business schools

Limited explorative empirical research was conducted at two UK "new

universities" to gauge the views of academic staff on the issue of trust

and control in HE quality management. The purpose of this research

was neither to test theories or hypotheses nor to find representative

proof for the claim that quality management has moved from a trust

based to a control-based mode of operation with one-way account?

ability as outlined above. Between 5 and 10 interviews were conducted

at each business school with a view to find out whether at least someacademics perceive such a change from being trusted to being controlled

to have happened, how they make sense out of this perceived change,how they see their professional autonomy and identity and their

relationship with colleagues affected by it and how they respond and

adapt to their changed work environment. As this is explorative, non

representative research, no systematic sampling was employed. The

interviewees participated either in response to a general e-mail to all

academic staff of selected departments or in response to being pur?

posefully selected and approached because of their particular manage?rial role21. Because of this approach, a certain (self) selectivity bias is

virtually unavoidable as academics without "strong feelings" about

quality management would not be likely to wish to be interviewed. The

interviews were conducted at two new university business schools in

order to have at least some degree of certainty that the views did not

merely reflected the practice of one particular institution.22

Some of the interviewees' views on trust, management control,

quality, professional autonomy and collegiality that are either particu?

larly illuminating or "typical" for the answers I received are reportedbelow. This selection is of course subjective to some degree.

Academic life, university teaching and quality managementin the early 1990s

A number of the interviewees started their academic careers around

the early 1990s. Among them, lecturer T gave a particularly lively

description of whatit was

like when she started. She isnow

director ofundergraduate courses in Accounting at university X, has joined uni?

versity X prior to the 1992 change to becoming a "new" university and

has taken on her current administrative responsibilities about three

years ago.


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552 ANDREAS HOECHT

Lecturer T recalls that she was "thrown into the deep end" whenshe took up her first position as a lecturer at a university. Not much

induction or help was offered apart from being handed over some

teaching material that had previously been used on the respectivemodules. There was no formal monitoring of teaching quality. The quality

system was "reactive and anarchic" and relied on student complaints.

Apart from student complaints, external examiners played a key role

in maintaining teaching quality. They would see the exam papers and

course and module documentation and by reading student exam an?

swers would get a fairly good idea about the quality of the teachingdelivered. The accounting subject was also always regulated to some

extent by the need to get the course content accredited by the profes?sional bodies. External examiners and student complaints could be seen

as the cornerstones of quality monitoring in the old days. The quality

management was "less than light touch, almost zero touch":

Your were left to your own devices in almost every way. This was

rather refreshing. You could do what you liked, but it could go

wrong. There was minimum control and monitoring.

Asked about the degree of collegiality, lecturer T described her col?

leagues in those days as "a herd of wild cats going their own separate

ways" But she maintained that the climate in the department was very

friendly.She felt that the examination boards were the occasions where col?

legiality was particularly evident:

"In these days we came together as a team of university teachers to

consider individual students who we actually knew... The disadvantage

was, however, that a lot of special pleading went on behalf of favouritestudents.. .It is much fairer and more transparent now. Side-takingdoesn't happen any more.. .It was a much more pleasant environment

to work then, but possibly not always fair and transparent".

Academic life, university teaching and quality management today

Lecturer F at university Y has been in education and HE for most of her

professionalcareer

and joined her university in the early 1990s. She iscurrently responsible for coordinating one of the subject groups in her

department. Her general view on the current quality assurance system

acknowledges some positive effects but is also highly critical of its

overall impact:


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In some ways they make sense.. .we should have some sort ofconsistency in what we do for students particularly.. .where students

experience very different standards of provision. However.. .teach?

ing staff now spend a heck of a lot more time on documentation,some of it.. .utterly pointless. The same is true for course manage?

ment documentation which has reached ludicrous proportions.. .1

guess this affects primarily research activity as this is always the

unseen victim of more administration, and secondly also teaching

preparation.

In her view, the philosophy of quality assurance is

one of intellectual Taylorism: the desire to segment and standardise

operations in order to establish the "one best way" and then imposeit on the workforce.

Lecturer T from university X also sees the current quality assurance

regime as much more prescriptive:

There is lots more reporting and checking going on.. .but the system

concentrates on process rather than on content... [The nature of thesystems is that] staff would be asked whether they used the latest

format for their module descriptions rather than what was actuallyin it.

When asked about the issues of trust and control, lecturer T main?

tained that the current system could be characterised as "superficial

supervision", but this could be interpreted in a positive way in that aca?

demics were still trusted to be in charge of the content of their teaching.After a moment of reflection, the answer changed quite dramatically:

I cannot see this as trust, because I am forced to do such a

demeaning task with someone holding a stick over my head.. .1 can't

see this as being trusted and I would find [being trusted] so much

more rewarding. This [type of quality management] de-skills and de

satisfies the whole process.. .1 am no longer exercising a professional

job, it is just ticking boxes and filling in forms.

The interviewees were asked to explain how they had reacted to the

changes that had been triggered by quality assurance and whether and

how their relationship with their colleagues had changed. Lecturer F

responded that

I think we have gone through various stages.. .in my department I

think there is a genuine desire to comply as best as we can but that


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554 ANDREAS HOECHT

has tended to result in a certain amount of fudge.. .Some of the peermonitoring processes of teaching standards work well.. .others are

simply rubber stamping colleagues' work.. .The problem, I think, is

that we are sliding into an unhealthy habit of being liberal with thetruth in order to appear compliant rather than making honest

appraisals and statements about what we do well and what we can

and cannot achieve... I think that we are becoming cynical and

again I think the need to tell lies in order to appear compliant is,

literally, so demoralising.

Asked about the impact of the quality system on the general climate

in her department, lecturer T said that colleagues were required to work

much closer together, but that there was much more nagging etc. and

that quality management had at times soured the relationship among

colleagues. It was difficult to say, though, whether this was entirely due

to quality management as it had coincided with a massive rise in student

numbers.23

When asked about how a teaching quality management system should

be designed that preserved academic autonomy and maintained colle?

giality and trust, many of the interviewees distinguished between

imposed formal control, including imposed (peer) processes, and infor?

mal self-organised processes that already existed. Lecturer F is a good

example:

I accept the need for some kind of standardisation. I think one thingwhich would ensure that standards are actually accepted and

operated well would be if systems were designed closer to the shopfloor. Very few ordinary staff are asked about the impact of

regulations, systems and controls.. .This is very different from theimposition of peer review as yet another artificial exercise in

pretending we are self-monitoring because it means that peoplemeet and talk in order to get the job done well, not in order to be

able to tick yet another box on some bit of paper for the QAA

community.

A small number of the interviewees have had direct personal

experience with an external quality audit visit. Among them is lecturer

S24 from university X who described the atmosphere as "generally verytense".

We knew that we represented the whole staff. We couldn't afford to

blow it. Credibility and accuracy were very important, using the

right words.


16/24


The atmosphere improved, however, during the visit:

Once I realised that they were not interested in what I did but

university policies.. .itmeant that I could focus attention and use the

language of the audit team in (my) responses to them. By then I had

realised that we were playing a game_

Lecturer S, however, did not feel that this was a wasted exercise. His

view was that it had been an interesting experience and that "someone

had to do it":

It is of huge importance for the university. Yes, it did involve a hugeamount of work and yes, it did distract from other things, .. .but the

preparation for it showed that we had some weaknesses that needed

to be sorted out .. .and it brought the team involved in the external

audit much closer together.

When directly asked whether he had been in any way somehow lib?

eral with the truth or put on some sort of stage performance at any

moment, lecturer S responded that

I chose the answers that were most beneficial to the process we were

going through. I did not criticize the system. It is not the language I

would use.. .but I was not forced to use their language, rather I was

shall we say made aware how to phrase my answers. I never lied in

any way, but I left things unsaid.

Conclusion

The purpose of the empirical research was to explore academics' per?

ception of the impact on quality assurance on their working lives, in

particular whether they feel that they have lost some of their profes?sional autonomy and are now more controlled and less trusted and

whether and how quality management has changed relationships among

colleagues. Most of the interviewees felt that quality assurance had

brought some benefits to students and accepted the need for some de?

gree of formalisation and standardisation that they saw as an inevitable

consequenceof

qualityassurance.

However, a clear majority of the interviewees felt that the current

quality system in operation at their university was overly bureau?

cratic, had high opportunity costs for themselves and did address

quality only at a rather superficial level. Many commented on the


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556 ANDREAS HOECHT

extensive need for documentation and "box-ticking" at the expenseof more directly quality enhancing activities such as teaching prepa?ration.

Quality assurance was mostly perceived as a form of control and an

encroachment on their professional autonomy. Many but not all felt

that they were less trusted and more controlled than they had been in

the past, although they did not perceive this control as being voluntarilyexercised by their immediate academic managers (for instance depart?

mental heads) but as the outcome of "the system" and the central

administrative core of their universities. In fact, a majority of academicsinterviewed felt that coll?gial relations had improved by the need to

work closer together. Even if they did not believe in the quality system

and, in fact, were very cynical about it and on occasions would even be

tempted to trick it, they would work together closely to meet its de?

mands for the sake of collegiality.I did not find evidence that suggested that "counterfeit reflexivity"

with its associated high emotional costs was taking place on a large

scale, but I found that some interviewees admitted that they were

deliberately and cynically adopting the "foreign language" of theauditors in order to achieve the desired results. This tended to be per?ceived as "playing a game" rather than something that would force

them to betray themselves and sell out their personality. Some even

admitted that on the occasion of an external audit visit they almost

considered this game as form of intellectual sport25.

Quality management is now an integral part of academic life and will

not go away. Academics should have no problem with the principles of

accountability, transparency and fairness. It is doubtful, however, if

these principles are really established by the current audit-based qualitymanagement regime. I hope that this article has provided some insight

into the highly limited and one-sided nature of the current account?

ability regime. Accountability and professional autonomy do not have

to be polar opposites. A glance at the critical writings on quality

management shows that it can be tailored to promote learning and

innovation rather than bureaucratic control. It also does not have to

undermine professional autonomy. It is high time for a proper debate

between HE policy-makers and academics on how to achieve quality in

higher education teaching and learning while maintainingtrust

andprofessional autonomy

- on how to maintain both the trust of the

public in the quality of university teaching and the perception of aca?

demics of being trusted and of having their professional autonomy

preserved or reinstated.


18/24


Notes

1. One indication for these concerns within the academic community is the renewed

interest reflected in the literature on "what it means to be an academic" and the

essence of academic freedom. See for instance Nixon et al. (1998) and Menand

(1996).2. These fears tend to overstate the scope and potential impact of new quality assur?

ance regimes, but are voiced in at least some of the literature (see the special issue of

Critical Perspectives on Accounting discussed below). Quality assurance in HE is

likely to always incorporate some degree of peer processes. Harvey and Knight

(1996) identify a common trend in HE quality assurance towards external quality

monitoring across all types of HE systems that combines three basic elements: self

assessment, peer evaluation (mostly organised as institutional visits) and the use of

performance indicators.

3. I am arguing below that this may reflect a rather biased view of the traditional

academic lifeworld. In this context, it is interesting to note the distinction made by

Harvey (1995) between two types of collegialism in HE: traditional inward-looking"cloisterism" that defends the right of academic discipline groups to defend their

realm against outside interference as opposed to a more outward-looking, open and

accountable "new collegialism".4. According to Power (1997, p. 43), new public management "emphasizes cost con?

trol, financial transparency, the atomisation of organisational sub-units, the de?

centralisation of management autonomy, the creation of market and quasi-marketmechanisms separating purchasing and providing functions of their linkages via

contracts and enhancement of accountability to the customers for the quality of

service via the creation of performance indicators".

The rise of new public management and managerialism in HE is well documented in

the literature. See for instance Henkel (2000) and Chandler et al. (2002).5. It is debateable whether HE should be considered as a public good. The most visible

beneficiaries of HE are the private individuals who gain financial rewards and social

status by obtaining a university degree. But HE has or is expected to have positiveexternalities for society via its contribution of skilled manpower to enhance the

productivityand

competitivenessof the

(national) economy. This instrumentalistview iswidely accepted as a driving force behind governments' pursuit of HE policyreforms.

6. Kells (1992, p. 17) makes a very useful distinction between quality assurance-

assurance of the public about the achievement of either a minimum or particularlevels of quality

-and quality control or management

- the achievement of control

over and improvement of quality.7. The PhD examination process has been examined in depth by Jackson and Tinkler.

See for instance Tinkler and Jackson (2000).8. This observation is concerned with the rise of political accountability. There are some

differences in views of what exactly ismeant by accountability in the accounting and

management and the political science literature. According to Middlehurst andWoodhouse (1995, p. 260), a core feature of accountability is "that of'rendering to

account' of what one is doing in relation to goals that have been set or legitimate

expectations that others may have of one's products, services or processes, in terms

that can be understood by those who have a need or right to understand the


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558 ANDREAS HOECHT

'account'." Ball et al. (1997) distinguish between market accountability and political

accountability. According to Ball et al. (1997, p. 148), "proponents of market

accountability may choose to emphasize either accountability through service provi?sion or accountability through effective financial management. The defining feature of

the former, accountability through service provision, is the organisation's respon?

siveness to customer demands, and ability to adapt its services accordingly. The

latter, accountability through effective management, stresses not so much the services

themselves but the process by which they are provided." (italics in original text). The

key feature of political accountability is that those who act on behalf of the elec?

torate, either as elected representatives or as paid civil servants, use particular pro?

cesses through which they "hold themselves accountable for their stewardship"

(Simey 1985, p. 17) quoted in Ball et al. (1997, p. 148).9. There are literally hundreds of definitions of trust. A useful pragmatic definition of

trust is that "an agent exhibits trust when he/she exposes herself/himself to the risk

of opportunistic behaviour by others and when he/she has no reason to believe that

the trusted other will exploit this opportunity" (Humphrey and Schmitz 1996, p. 4).A key point is that trust makes the trustor vulnerable to the behaviour of the trustee,

but the trustor ignores this possibility. This chosen ignorance makes social inter?

action possible. According to Zucker (1986), trust can be based on ascription (suchas membership of the same group), can be process-based (tied to past or expected

exchange such as previous interaction experience and reputation) and can be

institutional-based(where

trust is tied to formal structures, depending on individual

or organisation-specific attributes, for example membership in professional associ?

ations). Trust is more difficult to produce in modern complex societies as there is

normally no direct personal knowledge or interaction experience as a basis for

developing trust and hence institutional trust becomes paramount. Lane (1998)

provides a very useful concise introduction into theories and issues related to trust

within and between organisations.10. Agency theory is concerned with the governance mechanisms that enable principals

to ensure that agents fulfil their objectives. A mixture of control and incentive

instruments are advocated for to limit the agent's self-serving behaviour. (Arrow

1985; Eisenhardt 1989). Agency theory is based on the assumptions that human

behaviour is self-interested and subject to bounded rationality and that agents canuse the information asymmetry in their relationship with principals to their

advantage. While incentives can be used to influence agent behaviour, monitoring,

supervision, the threat of sanctions, in short: control should never be absent.

Auditing and inspection should be seen as part of such a control approach, in

particular if positive rewards and incentives are largely absent. This article, how?

ever, approaches quality assurance form a trust rather than a principal-agent

perspective, based on the fundamental assumption that academics need not be

disciplined and controlled, but, as responsible individuals and as members of a

social peer group, have a genuine interest in delivering quality in HE. The rela?

tionship between trust, social control and managerial control is further investigated

in Hoecht (2004) where trust is characterised as a form of social control that, unlike

direct managerial control, is able to create mutual commitment and is therefore

effective even where information asymmetries exist and direct supervision will not

work well. I believe that agency theory, given its fundamental assumptions-

self

interest, bounded rationality and information asymmetry-

is better suited for the


20/24


analysis of inter-institutional and inter-organisational relationships and their po?tential conflicts than for the analysis of interpersonal relationships, whereas the

concept of trust lends itself more to the analysis of interpersonal relationships

(within organisations) as it bears a cognitive as well as an affective dimension and

does not presuppose human nature in the way that agency theory at least implicitlydoes.

11. Clark (1987) provides a good introduction into "the academic profession" in dif?

ferent national, disciplinary and institutional settings. The contributors in Clark

(1984) introduce and explain eight different analytical perspectives for the analysisof HE (systems).

12. For Harvey and Knight (1996) however, quality and accountability in external

quality monitoring systems is mainly concerned with value for money and fitness

for purpose and not with service orientation, client empowerment and continuous

quality improvement in teaching and learning. "The accountability-led view sees

improvement as a secondary function of the monitoring process. Such an approach

argues that a process of external monitoring of quality, ostensibly for purposes of

accountability, is likely to lead to improvement as a side effect. Requiring

accountability, it is assumed, will lead to a review of practices, which in turn will

lead to improvement." Harvey and Knight (1996, p. 100).13. I believe that this lack of ideological control over the HE quality discourse is an

important factor for academics, passive acceptance of the many changes in their

working lives. Against this, however, one might argue, that it is not so much the

exact form of external reviews taking place than their very existence that exercises

this disciplinary effect and has catalysed these changes. Given that the "old uni?

versities" in the UK did not have the scrutiny of the CNAA that the polytechnicssector had prior to their incorporation, one would expect that the disciplinary effect

of quality assurance would be much more pronounced in the old university than in

the new university sector. This question, however, goes beyond the scope of this

article.

14. See for instance Barry et al. (2001) for job dissatisfaction among academic staff.

15. Malcolm and Zukas (2001) identify a link between dominant psychological ap?proaches to teaching and learning in HE that promote "a limited conceptualisation

of pedagogy as an educational "transaction" between individual learners andteachers and a social construction of the learner" and the preference of government

policy-makers for an instrumentalist evidence-based practice within educational

policy. For the process of becoming part of the academic community from a

community of practice perspective, see Malcolm and Zukas (2000).16.Harvey and Knight distinguish between five different approaches to quality: quality

as exceptional, quality as perfection and consistency, quality as fitness for purpose,

quality as value for money and quality as transformation. In their view, the UK

government is mainly concerned with value for money and fitness for purpose in its

HE policy agenda.17. See Lewis & Smith (1994) and Sherr & Teeter (1991) for their positive evaluations of

TQM in HE in the early 1990s. Birnbaum (2000) ismuch more sceptical and con?siders TQM as a typical "management fad" in his investigation into the life cycle of

academic management fads. He uses TQM as one of his example to explain how

ideas from private enterprise are adopted in HE long after their "prime" in private

enterprise and when their limitations have already been widely recognised there.


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560 ANDREAS HOECHT

18. For a further critical assessment of the mismatch of assumptions between TQMand HE see also Dill (1999).

19. Mullin and Wilson (1998) have responded to Jauch and Orwig's (1997) article.

They agree that "the assumptions underlying total quality management (TQM)suggest that implementation of TQM into the academic function of teaching inHEis problematic" (Mullin and Wilson 1998, p. 306), but emphasize the weaknesses of

the current (US) "quantity/course credit completion model" and stress the need for

an alternative quality model based on achieving quality via learning outcomes

orientation. According to Mullin and Wilson (1998), academia's resistance to

change is not valid argument against the change from a quantity model serving

administrative convenience, the current (US) model, to a quality model that fo?

cuses on customer needs. They respond to Jauch and Orwig's plea for the pres?

ervation of variability in teaching methods by claiming that the current model has

not achieved this at all, but has led to little variability in rigid curricula but extreme

variability in how well students learn. They contend that under the existing model

all variation in student achievement tended to be attributed to individual studentdifferences while the possibility of (teaching) system failure was ignored (Mullin &

Wilson 1998, p. 301). They also believe that while it may be difficult to identifycustomers and to satisfy their wants and needs in HE, this was no excuse for not at

least listening to them. More controversial, however, is their claim that TQM will

not be opposed by academics: "Faculty do not resist management control so much

asmanagement controls"(Mullin

and Wilson, 1998, p.305).

Their distinction be?

tween management control as management direction and management controls as

direct intervention may be lost on many academics grappling with the reality of HE

quality management. It does, however, have some common ground with a very

important distinction made by Sitkin and Sutcliffe (1994) between quality man?

agement systems designed for control and quality management systems designedfor learning.

20. Trust in peer group relationships can clearly have a negative, potentially oppressive

side to it. Insider-outsider mechanisms generally are very powerful but not always

benign forms of social control.

21. To protect the identity of the interviewees, their names and job titles/details have

been changed and their university affiliations are presented as university X and

university Y. The stated job titles and responsibilities reflect the nature of their

actual roles and responsibilities.22. Both universities have changed their title from polytechnics to universities as a

consequence of the restructuring and reform of HE in the UK in 1992. Althoughthere are different local adaptations to the UK HE quality framework, bothinstitutions are broadly comparable in terms of their key characteristics such as

size, student intake, portfolio of degree courses, etc. At each university, interviews

were conducted with at least one member of staff with a major responsibility for

quality issues and more interviews with other lecturing staff. In the interviews,

respondents were generally asked to compare the "old system" of quality man?

agement with the current QAA led system of quality assurance. The exact nature of

the "old system" was left deliberately vague as the purpose of this research was not

to ask the interviewees to trace the many changes that have happened in the

evolution of quality assurance since the early 1990s. As the empirical research

interest was primarily focused on academics' perception of and responses to their


22/24


universities' local practices and not on their analysis of government policy in the

higher education sector, this vagueness appears to be not ideal but acceptable.23. Most respondents felt that their universities had been under multiple pressures from

different directions and that quality management was only one, albeit a very sig?nificant factor that had impacted on their professional lives. Lecturer F emphasizedthat "the struggle is to maintain, should I say outdated (?) standards of student care

in terms of group sizes and frequency of seminars with hugely increased numbers

and no correspondent increase of permanent staff. The escalating part time budgetsshow the scale of this.. .but not the resulting pressure on permanent staff who now

have .. .the new task of managing a group of part-time colleagues."24. Lecturer S has worked in industry for most of his professional life and has held

managerial responsibilities mainly in the area of operations management. He has

joined HE as a late second career.

25. One interviewee, lecturer V from university Y, even praised the external audit team

for being "highly professional" and felt that the auditors were asking legitimateand constructive questions. In his view, the pressure came mainly from the uni?

versity itself, overreacting in their response to being "visited".

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