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In recent decades, higher education institutions have been encouraged to develop their own internal management systems as a response to perceived quality challenges in the sector. These quality management (QM) systems have often been found to mainly reflect external accountability requirements, with less focus on coherent study programme development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between QM practices and study programme delivery in Norwegian higher education institutions.

The study examined how coordination and control of quality work with respect to educational activities take place, using data from a survey to study programme leaders in a large sample of Norwegian higher education institutions.

The main findings show that a majority of institutions have established formal advisory bodies with a QM mandate, contributing to more coherent thinking, even though the division of labour between these bodies and formal decision-making structures often is unclear. The study also shows a high level of diversity in the collaboration practices among different actors involved in QM work, indicating that QM practices are adapted to local needs.

The paper provides new knowledge as to how QM is conducted in practice at the local level. It nuances earlier studies by showing the involvement of collegial bodies in QM although such bodies may have unclear mandates and, thus, an unclear role in the QM process.

The purpose of this paper is to address how issues of legitimacy are influencing the functioning and shaping of the field. The paper identifies key global agendas currently linked to the role of QA in the governance of higher education, the dependencies among key actors within the field and the possible directions of QA in the years to come.

The paper is based on existing studies on external quality assurance (EQA) and provides a meta-reflection on current trends and dynamics within the field.

The paper argues that the field of EQA is facing a rather turbulent future, both due to increasing competition from other actors that also claim ownership to issues related to quality, and from national authorities which are looking for ways to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of how the higher education sector is governed.

Studies on EQA need to be strongly linked to studies of governance in higher education as such a link will broaden the understanding of how the field of quality assurance is developing.

The paper provides some hints as to how agencies may position themselves in a more insecure future.

An original contribution is made by linking theories of how legitimacy is developed and shaped to the field of quality assurance.

The purpose of this paper is to review and identify changes in systems of external examinations in Denmark, the UK and Norway.

Comparative analysis of studies, reviews and documents concerning the purpose and functioning of systems of external examination in three selected countries.

The paper concludes that systems of external examinations are being transformed from a focus on student performance to a focus on programme quality and coherence in all three countries studied.

The paper shows that older and newer forms of quality assurance are becoming more integrated with the potential of creating quality assurance procedures addressing teaching and learning issues more directly.

Much attention has been given to newer forms of external quality assurance schemes. More traditional forms of quality assurance have, as a consequence, received less attention although they may still provide benefits to higher education.

The purpose of this research is to analyse how participants in leadership training programs in higher education value and perceive their training process.

A stylized theoretical model is developed indicating that leadership training may be designed along a collegial‐managerial continuum. To study how participants placed themselves on this continuum, a questionnaire was distributed to participants in three different leadership training programs.

The study shows that leadership training programs are tools to modernize higher education without resulting in a rejection of inherent values and characteristics of the sector.

Leadership training programs need to be supplemented with broader organisational development activities and a more systematic follow‐up process after completion of the program.

The paper aims to investigate the role of educational development centres, and their potential for playing a broader and more central role in quality and organisational development.

The paper is based on the results of three external evaluations of educational development centres in Denmark and Norway, combined with a literature review of studies of educational development centres.

Educational development centres are in a period of transformation due to external forces (Bologna, the demand for institutional quality systems, etc.), and this creates new dilemmas and challenges for educational development.

The paper points to the need to broaden the focus of educational development, and link it closer to other processes related to quality and organisational development.

This paper seeks to analyse how excellence and diversity are addressed in student recruitment strategies, and how these strategies are developed in eight Norwegian higher education institutions.

The study utilises a theoretical perspective that asserts that strategy is developed through practice. The authors have combined document analysis with qualitative interviews to investigate the development of institutional student recruitment strategies, their characteristics and their links to the individual institution's profile and ambitions.

The study reveals that student recruitment strategies are often grounded in inherent institutional identities, while at the same time responding to external ideas about excellence and diversity. The study also finds that higher education institutions show significant creativity in trying to adapt to these ideas and general trends, while at the same time maintaining their own characteristics and traditions. Findings suggest that student recruitment strategies are also used for accountability purposes. Given the importance of student recruitment, many higher education institutions attach surprisingly little importance to this issue.

The study encompasses only a small number of institutions in a single country, limiting the possibility of generalising aspects of the profile and content of the student recruitment strategies. Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that the processes associated with the development of student recruitment strategies are quite similar, with more emphasis on specific quantitative analytical schemes and less emphasis on other ways of organising strategy development.

The paper reveals the importance of placing greater focus on the ways in which strategic processes are organised and identifying the potential for improving the creative organisation of the strategising process.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how appointed leaders in Norwegian higher education perceive their role and influence, and their discretion as academic leaders.

The paper applies strategic, cultural and political perspectives on leadership to investigate the understanding and perceptions held by academic leaders regarding their own work. The study applied a qualitative strategy based on a cross-sectional design. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 18 purposefully selected academic leaders.

The findings reveal that appointed academic leaders are struggling with traditions and cultures and current governing structures and funding mechanisms on the other. The paper argues that this dilemma limits the potential for academic leaders to instigate change and that leadership perhaps has been overemphasized as a factor driving transformation of higher education.

The paper suggests the heated debates in Norway about whether academic leaders should be elected or appointed has limited relevance for understanding how academic leadership is performed in the actual daily work of leaders. The paper suggest that the current interest in selection of leaders perhaps should be downplayed in favor of a perspective focussing on the cultural factors framing current leadership practices.

The purpose of this paper is to identify those factors that key actors in university governance hold as to be important in realizing strategic change within their institutions.

Key decision-makers in 26 European universities were surveyed on their views on which factors bring about strategic change. The results were interpreted using a theoretical framework emphasizing organizational archetypes and their development.

The findings indicated that strategic changes in universities were perceived as highly dependent on leadership, decision-making procedures, communication and evaluation. However, some differences between the universities in the sample can be identified, supporting indicating the relevance of using organizational archetypes as an analytical tools for observing change within the higher education sector.

The study links organizational level developments on strategic management to macro-level change within the European higher education landscape, and provides new insights intoon the debate on convergence and differentiation in organizational fields.

Evaluation literature often emphasises the involvement and interest of local academic leaders as vital conditions for organisational improvement and change during and after assessment processes. Careful planning, organising, staffing and decision‐making in relation to the assessments are in particular highlighted as basic and important responsibilities for academic leaders. By studying a series of external quality assessments of educational programmes at universities and colleges in Norway, and analysing to what extent local department heads influenced the assessment processes, this article suggests that even if such basic leadership responsibilities are taken, a successful outcome of the assessment process is very much related to academic leaders’ ability to translate, interpret and give meaning to the assessment process. This result points to the significance of the cultural and symbolic sides of academic leadership during assessment processes.

In a national quality assessment of business administration in Norway, the work of eight simultaneously working external assessment panels was studied. The article examines how the panels considered different kinds of information sources and processes during the assessment, and in writing their reports. The study shows that information from self‐evaluation reports and instructional checklists, from an arranged conference and a training seminar, was ranked low by the panels, while information from the interaction between the panels and the assessed department and/or institution was highly valued together with internal discussions inside the panels and the assessors’ own knowledge and experience. In writing their external reports, the information highly valued was used most by the assessors. Possible implications of the study, especially in relation to the organisation and set‐up of external assessments, are presented in the conclusion.