TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT, VOL.

9, NOS 2&3, 1998, 311-320

CARFAX

Quality and ISO 9000 in educational organizations

NEIL MORELAND & MICHAEL CLARK
School of Education, University of Wolverhampton, Gorway Road, Walsall WSl 3BD, UK

Introduction This paper discusses the development of ISO 9000 (formerly BS 5750) certified quality assurance systems (QASs) in three educational institutionsa university, a college of further education (FE) and a primary schoolall in the West Midlands region of England. An analysis of the cases is conducted around three themes. The first theme is sense-making in organizations. The second theme is managerialism in education. The final theme is discourse and behavioural consent. The case studies The university The university, a former polytechnic, has over 22 000 students across five campuses. The experiences of key staff during the development of the quality assurance procedures and manuals have been documented by Doherty (1993), Harrison (1994), Storey (1993, 1994) and Stott (1994). In brief, the senior management of the university decided to develop a BS 5750 based quality system as endeavours at developing a total quality management (TQM) culture were not making the desired progress. A pro vice chancellor with special responsibility for quality wrote the quality manual, in conjunction with the head of the university's Quality Assurance Unit (QAU). Staff were then invited to join quality circles (or 'magic circles' as they came to be known; Storey, 1993) to undertake the writing of the work procedures. During this phase the writing of procedures actually took longer than senior management wanted. In the final stages of putting the procedures in place things were hurried through. After over three years of development the university achieved accreditation to BS 5750 in May 1994.
The college offurther and higher education

The college was formed through an amalgamation of two colleges in September 1986. At the start of the research the institution had six main campuses, 516 full-time academic staff, 300 support staff and in excess of 25 000 students enrolled. The numbers of staff and campuses have gradually been reduced as a result of management financial strategy. 0954-4127/98/020311-10 $7.00 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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A history of the development of the QAS in the college is presented by Cockburn and MacRobert (1991) and MacRobert (1994). The college used external funding to pay for two staff to do the feasibility study. A survey undertaken demonstrated that there was actually little required by the standard that did not exist in some form or another somewhere in the college. The two (by now designated) quality managers wrote up the work procedures based on consultation with those staff they thought followed the best practice. In May 1991 the college achieved registration to the standard.
The primary school

The school has 17 full-time staff and 385 pupils, including 60 in the adjacent nursery. The school decided to seek ISO 9000 registration after four staff attended a training day in December 1991 on BS 5750. The first six months of development involved the deputy head, with some help from an external consultant, translating the standard to the context of the school. They then wrote the quality manual and the teaching staff were asked to write the work procedures which would satisfy the quality manual. Two INSET training days were used for this. The school achieved registration to the standard in February 1993. Quality assurance and ISO 9000 Quality assurance (QA) is an approach intended to ensure consistent outcomes from processes by trying to design errors out and quality in. QA typically requires the specification of quality standards (fitness for purpose), with resulting consistent methods of working intended to assure that standards are met consistently. ISO 9000 is a procedural approach to quality assurance. The standard of quality is defined according to stated and implied consumer requirements, with procedures written and followed to assure that customer requirements are consistently delivered. The procedures and associated manuals form a "quality management system" which is "comprehensive, consistent and unambiguous" (BSI, n.d., p. 4). Once written and in operation: "A quality system should include the control of all functions/factors/activities which can affect the quality of the service" (BSI, n.d., p. 11). The effect of this is to ensure that staff work in predictable ways. This is a straightforward materialist approach to change that starts from behaviour rather than ideas. If you change the practice you can change the culture. Perspective 1: Sense-making and ISO 9000 in the case studies Sense-making, which we have derived from Weick (1995), is concerned with the way that people (staff) understand their situation, and the constraints and pressure that bear down on them. Sense-making allows for a consideration of wider structural and societal developments to be addressed.
The educational context

The Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s in Britain followed a reforming agenda towards education and the other public sector services. This agenda was largely based upon the ideological proposition that markets are inherently superior to other forms of economic organization and disciplinary pressures. These changes were part of a move by the ideological right: "to create a truly 'organic ideology', one that seeks to spread throughout society and to create a new form of 'national popular will' " (Apple, 1989, p. 7). To achieve

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this the new approach has to connect (resonate) with feelings and perceptions that the populace already have. Where that is so, the ideological solutions proposed can be presented and experienced as 'common-sense' views (Apple, 1989). The Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major were generally very successful in this task: "What has been accomplished has been a successful translation of an economic doctrine into the language of experience, moral imperative and common sense. The free market ethic has been combined with a populist politics" (Apple, 1989, p. 7). The idea of 'quality' was one of the focal terms in this ideological movement across the whole public sector (see the discussions in Kirkpatrick & Martinez Lucio, 1995). The drive for quality improvements was orientated around such terms as value for money, accountability and the three Es (economy, efficiency and effectiveness). This is neither the time nor the place to provide a rounded analysis of sense-making. Instead, we will examine two properties of the process of sense-making. The first property consists of sense-making being 'focused on and by extracted cues' (Weick, 1995, p. 49). The second property of sense-making we want to consider is that it is "driven by plausibility rather than accuracy" (Weick, 1995, p. 55). Plausibility is context specific, and becomes so by the ways that a prevailing ideology connects with a populace-based 'common-sense' so that solutions seem plausible and address on-going concerns.
ISO 9000 as a common sense-making

In terms of sense-making, the standard offered the institutions "a proven quality management system" (BSI, n.d., p. 2). The use and acceptance of the standard in the private sector was significant due to its relatedness to the market ideology. This was felt by a representative of the lecturers' union, who said of the decision to opt for ISO 9000: this is purely impressionistic but I suspect it [BS 5750/ISO 9000] fitted in with that particular era in the 1980s and going into the early 1990s where we had to be business like. We had to be enterprising and we had to be business like. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being business like, but all the language changed and students became customers, recruitment and publicity became marketing . . . and I'm sure that BS 5750 was seen as a part of that business ethos, business discourse. So I think it was a bit trendy, frankly, ha, but I'm not saying that was the main motivation.

The continuing influence of ISO 9000 on sense-making in an organization

Having an ISO 9000 QAS in place can assist managers and staff in organizations to cope more confidently with their situations. The head of the school, for example, said that the school was now more organized. ISO 9000 had given managers and staff more time because: "We're not firefighting, are we? So, we know we've got a direction, we've got a path, we've got a clear, you know, target of where we're going." She said that for the staff at the school ISO 9000 had the following effect: "It's made them more secure, I would have thought, and they've got structures which they can work from". The newly qualified teacher (NQT) at the school, for example, spoke of the system as a 'structure' within which 'bricks' could be pulled out and replaced when changes are made. Change can be managed in an incremental way. As the school's quality manager said of the interaction between the QAS and the changes in the context of education: "In a way, and certainly from a management point of view, the [QAS] has helped us cope with the change". The head of the school noted: "I'm not sure

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that we really knew then that that was going to be the way forward, but we've designed it so it is the way forward". ISO 9000 establishes patterns of working and thinking on institutions, examining issues, problems and solutions. This is achieved by requiring procedures and through audits and actions required for (non)conformance. An example of people viewing issues in a particular way is how the college's head of information and quality systems (IQS) split the staff there into three broad categories according to whether or not they had procedures and not in respect of their teaching. In the first category, there were those whom he said "were very conscientious and had their own systems". This third "was not going to be improved by putting in a quality system because it was being managed, it was under control". In the 'middle', as he called it, there were 'people of very good will', who 'knew' they ought to be planning and recording but who failed to do so because of factors such as 'constraints of time'. Then he said, there were those at 'the worst end' who worked on the 'beam me up system', which he described thus: You know the Starship Enterprise? Okay, Captain Kirk gets himself beamed up. He suddenly appears on the Enterprise and then he beams himself out onto some other planet. Well we actually had lecturing staff in the college, probably about a third, who actually could do that. They would suddenly beam themselves into a classroom, deliver something to students and beam themselves out of the institution again and there was no planning, there was virtually no recording, there was no coordination, there was no curriculum evaluation, there was no design, there was no development for perhaps about a third of what we were delivering. At the college, the procedures were written on the basis of what the quality managers defined as 'good practice'. Another example of how ISO 9000 can impose patterns of sense-making can be seen in a comment by the primary school administrator, who said that: "if something appears not to be working well in school and there isn't a procedure written to cover that eventuality then it's decided that a procedure should be written so that in future there won't be a problem in that area. So, in a way, it's, it's driven by events. You don't rush around thinking: what can we write a procedure for?" Another way in which ISO 9000 imposes a pattern of sense-making on the organization is in the way it requires procedures to be clear cut. This was recognized by an associate dean in the university, who said that some areas of work were not yet clear cut: "If I say they're a bit grey well that perhaps should force us to think why they are grey. Should we be making them black or white?" Finally, ISO 9000 can affect sense-making in an institution by immersing managers and staff in a new language. As a senior lecturer at the university said: "You pick up the words that are useful to you and when you've got to write something in accordance with this system then you fall into the language more easily than you did". This can become the commonsense view of the organization. As an NQT at the school said about the process of staff receiving updates about changes to work procedures: "It really did help you to remember these things. So in a way it's like, you know, you're walking around with all these procedures in your head . . . most schools would say it's commonsense, sort of thing, but the fact that it's all written down . . . that's what you're supposed to do." From our research, it is clear that changing the practice of staff and management and the language with which they talk about the organization and work can make them view the idea of quality assurance and working to procedures seem a common-sense approach.

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Perspective 2: ISO 9000 and managerialism in the case studies There has been a move to the ideology and practices of managerialism across the whole public sector (Pollitt, 1993). An important aspect is the preferential accord this gives to management. Managerialism asserts the right of management to intervene in areas that were previously seen as the domain of an individual's professional discretion. The education system has not been exempted from these processes: "in recent years there has been evidence of a change in the style of education management, both at national and local level, towards a 'managerialism' emphasising efficiency rather than broader access" (Dale, 1989, p. 139). Quality as a market motif in the public sector links with managerialism. The impact is to accept less involvement of professional groups in defining quality and a greater orientation to consumers in markets. In the raw form, this view is a threat to the influence of professionals in decision-making processes. Quality became another area to be colonized by managers. Murgatroyd and Morgan (1993, p. 55) note that "quality has to be managed, it just does not happen by chance". The need for greater efficiencies and the relationship that this had to ISO 9000 is illustrated in a comment by an associate dean at the university, who said: "We've got to try and create savings now based upon the platform [ISO 9000] and the obvious reasons are (a) to improve quality, but (b) to look at our, our cost control. You're aware of the pressures on all universities to save money?" ISO 9000 offers a framework for a quality management system; that is, a system set by and under the control of senior management. Dale (1989, pp. 130-146) provides a useful distinction for understanding the impact of ISO 9000 and associated managerialism. He suggests there is a move from 'licensed autonomy' to 'regulated autonomy' in education. Under the former, the teaching profession was given freedom within broad constraints to organize work, providing they stayed within acceptable limits and behaviours. Under regulated autonomy, however, a government achieves more explicit control. Dale (1989, p. 133) summarizes this move thus: "Control over the education system is to become tighter, largely through the codification and monitoring of processes and practices previously left to teachers' professional judgement, taken on trust or hallowed by tradition. This shift has come to be equated with the move to greater teacher accountability." This is a shift at the national level (witness the National Curriculum), but it is likely to occur at the level of individual institutions also. ISO 9000 fits into this shift, as it provides a methodology for management to codify knowledge and understanding of work processes into procedures and, through the auditing process, to hold individual staff accountable for following them. Dale (1989, p. 133) calls this type of codification "the bureaucratisation of teachers' professional judgement". In each case study the decision to develop the QASs was a management decision with little or no consultation with staff. A union representative considered that management had deliberately imposed the QAS with little consultation to accelerate the development and registration process: "They [the college's management] anticipated resistance. They probably felt that if we get involved in the negotiation it will take too long so let's face up to the resistance and face it off and push the issue forward." He also said of management that "certainly they've taken that view that yes, we're managers, we must lead, we must make decisions, we're the ones in control". Writing the procedures in the college was based upon staff deemed as exemplifying good practice. The two managers writing the procedures would write a procedure and ask the staff to comment on it. Staff tended to comment on issues such as grammar and spelling, "but not to challenge the procedure". Of this approach, and how deliberate it was, he said: "We knew what we were doing. We weren't naive. We knew what we were doing but it worked better than we'd ever anticipated."

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At the college, the head of IQS considered that managerial practices were changed, as there was: "much greater coUegiality. We used to have a system where senior managers really operated in almost total isolation from the rest of the college ... Now there's far more collegiate decision-making, far more broad discussion at senior management and indeed at middle management level than there ever was in the past." Formal discourses of openness can be used to create the impression of reduced managerialism. An example is the procedure in the college's QAS, which deals with 'management action request'. This is a process by which staff can demand written answers from management. The head of the college's QAU felt that this made the management 'more open', since such formal requests for answers could not be made before the QAS was in place. In practice, however, if management merely replies that there is nothing to be done about the issue, the procedure is satisfied. A union representative at the college went further in his criticism. He said that: "There's not much evidence of management actually taking into account whatever ideas there are that come up. I think staff still feel as if they're being managed from the top downwards and there's not, it's not been a democratic system at all when perhaps it could have been." Managerial control over staff is increased through the obligation to follow procedures. The assertiveness of this was noted by the head of the college's QAU. Under the system, he can request that people perform certain actions: "it's a bit more than a request, it's, I'll actually tell people, you know, you are required, or you must do this within 10 working days to put this nonconformity right and you must sign this piece of paper as evidence that you've done it and if I subsequently come back and audit you and I find that you haven't done it then you're in trouble". He later said that the QAS had changed the college for the academic staff because "It's made them more accountable". Once a QAS is in place changes can be made to it, but management has the final say in this too. A teacher at the school recognized and accepted this as right when she talked about amendments to procedures which can originate from: "not just from audits, you know, it can come from any member of staff. If they feel that there's a concern things can be changed. You know, obviously [the head] has the last say so . . . but I think, I think she's only said it twice that no, we'll leave things as they are. But I mean, she has that right." Lest we be accused of over-zealousness, we do not think that the new context and ISO 9000 automatically give free range for managers to do as they wish. In the university, for example, an administrator said that the system had made managers "more accountable to themselves as well as to everybody else". Managers have procedures to work to, against which they can be audited. At the college the union representative considered there was some potential in the QAS for more democratic decision-making, but that staff had yet to use it. Staff considered that the QAS was an imposition from above. Perspective 3: Managing discourses to develop consent to ISO 9000 The individuals in these case studies have agency, within constraints (Dale, 1989). They are not puppets who can be simply pulled into action by management or economic determinism. Thus, there have been attempts at managing changes and building acceptance among the staff. Staff, however, may accept the QAS regardless of management action and attempts to build behavioural consent because they too are part of the 'national popular will' (Apple, 1989, p. 7). Staff too may have concerns about public services based on their experiences as 'consumers' of these services. If critical discourses and 'common-sense' ideological solutions such as markets are acceptable in these other public services, they may come to see them as suitable for education also.

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One teacher at the school believed: "I mean, okay, yes we have to be accountable, and especially with OFSTEDs". Another reason for accepting the change to ISO 9000 is the discourse it is couched in. It is about quality assurance and a quality management system. They are meant to ensure 'quality' which everyone ought to be for. If one opposes the changes then one opposes 'quality'!
Constructing behavioural consent among staff

There are examples in the case studies of how some of the realities of having ISO 9000 became blurred for those experiencing the system, so helping to construct behavioural consent among staff. One of the two managers at the college who developed the QAS considered that they helped staff because: "What we're saying to people is 'you need to take control of what you're doing'. So it's not a case of us controlling you or someone else controlling you but you've taken control not only of of the delivery of the curriculum but its design, its evaluation and its development." Of the approach to writing procedures for staff, the interviewee said: "So what you've got is you've got the sense of ownership and empowerment for staff without the pain of actually having to do the work". The use of the ideologies of ownership and empowerment to construct commitment to the QAS among staff was also evident in the school. A teacher there said that with regard to ISO 9000, the important thing was: "making the system work for us, if you like, rather than the other way around". The quality manager at the school described the approach to the development of the QAS as: "coUegial really, and it was empowering all of the staff to be responsible for, for the implementation of it".
Collegiality as discourse

The last quotation in the foregoing is an example of the discourse of'collegiality'. Collegiality has become the orthodox way to run schools (Campbell & Southworth, 1992; Hargreaves, 1992). This was reflected in a comment made by a teacher at the school when asked how she would describe the management approach to developing the QAS: "Are we looking at specific language here like collegiality? Ha, ha. I was just thinking back to our OU [Open University] courses." The concept of collegiality, however, is often ill-defined in practice. Hargreaves (1992) distinguishes between various forms of collegiality. First, there is collaborative collegiality in which the working relationships between colleagues are spontaneous, voluntary, development oriented, pervasive across time and space and unpredictable. In the second form of collegiality, contrived collegiality, the working relationships are administratively regulated, compulsory, implementation oriented, fixed in time and space and predictable. We consider that while an ISO 9000 system can be linked to styles fitting in with the first of these conceptions of collegiality, it is primarily about the second. ISO 9000 establishes an administrative system of procedures and audits designed to regulate working relationships, and to make them compulsory, predictable and fixed in the short term. These processes still have to be managed. Despite the school's quality manager suggesting that the QAS did not tell people "how to go about their responsibility" and left teachers with "autonomy in your own classroom and responsibility for your own delivery", she later said that in the school "we're in the next phase of development which is actual classroom practice, the quality of teaching and learning that's going on in the school". Having a QAS that is accredited to ISO 9000 also carries the necessity to maintain accreditation in the face of external verifier activities. The standard requires that customers

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are asked their opinions on the services being offered. If they complain, it can become an extra pressure on individuals to conform, as was recognized by a dean at the university: "The downside is of course that having got the Charter Mark and 5750 there is now an expectation and if we failed to produce the service of the quality people expect I think complaints will be on the increase". Benefits and social costs
The claimed benefits

The essential benefit claimed by each institution is that it now has a system in place for managing quality and is more organized. At the college, for example, the benefits of ISO 9000 that are claimed are: the introduction of a quality management system which has the inherent adaptability to allow staff to work with professional flexibility within known structures; the development of recording systems which result in a more controlled and effective operation; and a quality ethos where all of the issues that affect the service we provide are constantly on both official and unofficial agendas (Cockburn & MacRobert, 1991, p. 3). The interviewees at various times claimed that having ISO 9000 has: made people more aware of the work they have to do and the effect it has on others in the institution, especially their internal customers; established more realistic goal setting; helped to identify areas for improvement; clearly defined roles and responsibilities which helps to settle new staff into their jobs and provide continuity during staff changes. These gains are not inconsiderable. When considering the benefits, however, it has to be borne in mind that improvement can be a matter of opinion. Communications within the organization is a good example of this. At the university it has been claimed that the "principal benefit has been in the area of communication" (Storey, 1993, p. 49). A dean there, however, was more circumspect in his comments on the subject: "We've got communication around and about 5750 but not university wide for other things". A senior lecturer at the university, however, was even less convinced that communications had been improved: "if you mean communications in terms of bits of paper flying around then it's increased it dramatically. If you mean people really talking to each other about important things, then it's probably a substitute for it frankly."

The negative social costs of ISO 9000

There were recognized social costs to developing the ISO 9000 standard in the case studies. One such cost was the sense of exclusion by some staff. Other social costs are the increase in bureaucracy, and an impersonal feel created in the institutions as a result of having the QAS. A senior lecturer at the university felt that the QAS did not relate to them and was just a nuisance. She said that some lecturers found that the content of some procedures "just didn't relate, neither the language nor the concepts", to how they worked. The QAS, she felt, also contributed to a feeling that there was a gap between the academics and the administrators. She added that ISO 9000 has contributed "quite considerably" to the feeling among

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academics that: "increasingly the administrative side of things is not an academic support mechanism but in fact has a life of its own and instead of academics broadly saying what they need administrators for, administrators are telling academics what do do". She said that parts of the system were "really top-down" and seemed "distant", which made them seem "to be about something other than quality. It seems to be about standardisation . . . regimentation. Fitting us all into the same mould." The impact of ISO 9000 on staff working patterns was significant change. "I think they are now effectively becoming obliged to adhere to the procedures and work instructions and that for some of them this is a bit of a blow" (university associate dean). Some interviewees felt that there were hidden costs to developing and having the QAS. Some said that the systems meant imposing a lot on the goodwill of some, if not all, staff. Some staff in each case study had found themselves having to do much extra work. This was especially so in the school, where, because of its size compared to the other institutions, there was less scope for committing resources and staff time specifically to running the QAS. Conclusions The three case study institutions discussed here have had to cope with major changes in the environment in which they operate. The management and staff have had to make sense of the new context and find means of coping with the impact of the changes. The particular path chosen by the management, ISO 9000, has affinity with the market and managerial ideologies which are shaping the new context of education. This, and the fact that it provides a comprehensive framework for viewing the organization, helps to make ISO 9000 appealing for managers and can given them confidence in their processes of sense-making. Putting the system into operation, however, is likely to provoke mixed reactions among staff, especially as the system can have social costs. For this reason, the change to the standard has to be managed to make it more acceptable and to develop behavioural consent among staff. Other educational institutions will have to face the changes and we offer this paper to help the managers and staff in them to consider one of the options available to them and some of the possible implications of taking it. References
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MACROBERT, I. (1994) Sandwell College and BS 5750: A syncretistic pilgrimage? In: G.D. DOHERTY (Ed.) Developing Quality Systems in Education (London, Routledge), pp. 258-269. MuRGATROYD, S. & MORGAN, C. (1993) Total Quality Management and the Sehool (Buckingham, Open University Press). POLLITT, C.J. (1993) Managerialism and the Public Services: Cuts or Cultural Change?, 2nd Edn (Oxford, Blackwell). STOREY, S. (1993) Total quality management through BS 5750: A case study. In: R. ELLIS (Ed.) Quality Assurance for University Teaching (Buckingham, Open University Press and The Society for Research into Higher Education), pp. 37-56. STOREY, S. (1994) Doing total quality management the hard way: Installing BS 5750/ISO 9001 at the University of Wolverhampton. In: G.D. DOHERTY (Ed.) Developing Quality Systems in Education (London, Routledge), pp. 174-189. STOTT, H . (1994) A foot in two camps: Doing BS 5750/ISO 9001 in higher education and industry. In: G.D. DOHERTY (Ed.) Developing Quality Systems in Education (London, Routledge), pp. 190-204. WEICK, K . E . (1995) Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage).