Abstract

There is a growing pressure on higher education institutions for implementing quality management mechanisms and improving their quality. Efforts in this direction are hindered by the lack of an agreed quality management model. Management fads diffused into academia and then almost all of them were abandoned. The objective of this paper was to develop a framework for higher education institutions that fits their characteristics rather than feeding the fads. It seeks to establish where there is common ground and where the differences exist in some well-known quality management models (ISO, TQM, EFQM) based on quality management framework developed here. While the proposed elements of framework for academic quality management outlined in the article will require further development and evaluation, it provides an initial and necessary framework for synthesising existing knowledge, and suggesting valuable direction for related research.