Towards an analytical framework for understanding the development of a quality assurance system in an international joint programme

Abstract

This paper intends to construct an analytical framework for understanding quality assurance in international joint programmes and to test it in a case analysis of a European–Chinese joint doctoral degree programme. The development of a quality assurance system for an international joint programme is understood as an institutionalization process of an organizational innovation, and the institutionalization process is also interpreted as a process of reconciling different institutional logics in the institutional changes. Based on these understandings, in the paper we construct an analytical framework by combining insights on conceptions of quality, the institutional logics perspective, and organizational innovation studies. The framework constructed aims mainly to tackle two issues: first, changes in multiple institutional logics underlying the quality assurance system, and second, factors facilitating/impeding the logics changes in the institutionalization process. In the empirical analysis, we take an international joint doctoral programme between a Chinese university and a Portuguese university as an example to analyse the initiation and implementation of a quality assurance system in the programme. While developing a system accommodating the traditions and needs of both sides is not an easy task, we found that several factors, namely profitability, compatibility and the agency of institutional entrepreneurs, may facilitate the process.