Quality management systems—analysing processes of diffusion in different organizational fields of continuing education

Abstract

Abstract Quality management systems have become an integral part of adult education. The process of establishing these management tools, which originally stem from the industrial sector, can be described as process of diffusion. Until now, the extent of organizations orientations towards the expectations of their organizational field affiliation and the significance of educational policy interventions, such as legal requirements for the design of these diffusion processes, has largely remained unknown. With regard to the plurality of continuing education, different contexts are considered. New-institutionalism will be used as main approach. Based on the data of the wbmonitor-survey 2017, an event history analysis is methodically carried out. This allows examining to what extent the organizational field and legal requirements have an influence on the probability of implementing quality management systems. Despite a similar development of the implementation process, differences between the organizational fields (1 “VHS”, 2 “non-profit/public domain”, 3 “commuities/associations” and 4 “private sector”) are showing. Furthermore, clear effects of legal requirements are visible, although these requirements have different effects on the respective fields as well.

Keywords

• Quality management
• Governance
• Adult education
• New institutionalism
• Isomorphism
• AZAV