Quality Regimes and Organisational Instrumentation

Abstract

Though national specificities, global standardisation dynamics and local diversity processes do coexist, specific local considerations are not bulldozed out of existence by the relentless march of global standardisation, ranking criteria and excellence-focussed quality performances. While less visible at first sight, this is the case when considering what happens at the level of single universities inside the same country, for instance, as underlined in Chapter 2 for Europe but also for the USA inside the same category of institutions Differences between universities do not only result from the varied success with which they have implemented grand national plans designed by reforms championing excellence-based policies.