A critical review of the quality of research on quality culture in higher education1

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The term ‘quality culture’ dates back to organisation and management literature of the 1960s, but only more recently it gained traction in higher education. Researchers explored what it is (or could be) and what the antecedents and impacts are. This paper takes critically stock of research on quality culture from a research quality perspective, looking at papers in the Web of Science and Scopus databases that explicitly use the concept. The results of the analysis (116 studies) are mixed: next to some interesting empirical studies and attempts to further refine the concept quality culture, there are many studies that – unfortunately – do not add much to our scholarly understanding. The paper highlights two important caveats: conceptual confusion and a lack of reliability and offers suggestions for improvement.