From Compliance to Integration: A Knowledge Management-Based Maturity Model for Quality Culture in Portuguese Higher Education

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are increasingly required to move beyond formal compliance with Quality Management Systems (QMS) towards the development of genuine Quality Cultures — organisational environments in which improvement is collectively owned, evidence-based, and knowledge-driven. Yet, despite growing theoretical interest in the intersection of Knowledge Management (KM) and Quality Culture (QC), empirical investigation of this relationship remains notably scarce, particularly within the European context, where quality assurance research has historically prioritised structural and regulatory dimensions over the cultural and knowledge processes that sustain them. This paper presents the conceptual framework and preliminary empirical findings of an ongoing doctoral research project. The study makes two contributions: it empirically investigates the mediating role of KM processes — namely knowledge creation, acquisition, sharing, sensemaking, retrieval, and utilisation — in the relationship between TQM frameworks and QC within Portuguese HEIs; and it introduces the Quality Culture Maturity Model (QCMM), an inductively derived four-stage developmental framework grounded in the qualitative analysis of all 97 Portuguese HEIs' institutional evaluation reports. The study is grounded in Organisational Psychology, anchored in ISO 30401:2018 as a practical implementation reference, and addresses four core research questions concerning the extent to which KM processes are integrated into Portuguese HEIs' QMS, and how they shape QC. A sequential mixed-methods design is employed, comprising: (a) a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), registered in PROSPERO and following PRISMA protocol; (b) quantitative data collection via validated psychometric instruments administered to quality managers across all 97 Portuguese HEIs; and (c) qualitative triangulation through semi-structured interviews with institutional leadership, focus group with quality teams, and documentary analysis of strategic plans and institutional evaluation reports. Two sets of preliminary findings are reported. First, the SLR confirms that empirical research on the KM-QM relationship in HEIs remains geographically concentrated in non-European contexts, validating the relevance of this study. Second, documentary analysis of all 97 institutional evaluation reports from the Agency for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES) reveals a consistent pattern: institutions rated 'Good' or 'Very Good' by A3ES demonstrate a greater capacity for evidence-based decision-making, underpinned by more sophisticated — though often unrecognised — KM practices. From this analysis, a four-stage Quality Culture Maturity Model (QCMM) is inductively proposed, tracing institutional progression from Compliance-Driven through Structural and Aligned to Integrated Quality Cultures. A particularly distinctive finding is the prevalence of what we term 'unlabelled KM' — knowledge-sharing and sensemaking practices structurally embedded in institutional routines but neither formally recognised nor strategically leveraged. These findings suggest that the transition toward an integrated QC is fundamentally a knowledge challenge: institutions must develop the organisational capacity to transform raw data into actionable knowledge that informs strategic decision-making. This research contributes an original empirical and conceptual framework to a field marked by theoretical abundance but empirical scarcity, with direct practical implications for institutional leadership, quality managers, and European quality assurance policy.