PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore faculty's perceptions of quality management activities (QMA) within their departments, attention being paid to relevant quality aspects and whether quality management contributes to control or improvement of higher education. Furthermore, it examines differences between departments and relationships between the different variables.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire containing items with Likert‐type answer scales was distributed to faculty (n=266) of 18 departments of universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands: 16 items dealt with QMA, 17 with attention paid to relevant quality aspects and ten with the perceived effects.FindingsFaculty were neutral about the degree to which sufficient QMA were conducted within their departments. They were positive about the attention paid to relevant quality aspects. Furthermore, they were positive about the effects in terms of improvement and negative about the effects in terms of control. Significant differences were found between departments. Finally, positive correlations were found between management activities, attention being paid to quality aspects and the perceived effect in terms of improvement.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of this study is that only faculty's perceptions were measured, thus it is not clear whether these QMA really result in improvement in educational practice.Practical implicationsDepartments paying little attention to quality aspects and with few QMA could really benefit from further increasing their quality management efforts.Originality/valueQuality management is often seen as mainly contributing to control and managerialism. This study demonstrates that according to faculty, quality management is influencing improvement positively.

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In this paper, staff members' perceptions about the organisational culture are measured. The questions addressed are: what are their opinions about the current and preferred organisational culture? Are there differences between the current and preferred situation? Do the perceptions differ per department? The Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument was sent to staff involved in 18 different departments within Dutch universities of applied science.The results demonstrated that both a flexibility-and control-oriented culture were moderately experienced in practice. In addition, significant differences were found between the current and preferred situation as well as a significant variation over departments for the current situation. Staff members in general, prefer a flexibilityoriented culture to a control-oriented culture. These findings imply that the organisational culture in many departments is not yet fully in line with the staff members' preferences.

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