1 QUALITY EVALUATIONS AND THEIR IMPACTS: THE ROLES OF LEGITIMACY AND SIGNIFICANCE

Literature on academic assessment, as well as on total quality management more generally, has traditionally paid little attention to the role of cognition in the implementation of these assessment programs. Research in this area has focused instead on issues of design such as the need for performance indicators (Kells, 1990; Jongbloed and Westerheijden, 1993; Sizer, Spee, and Bormans, 1992) or on the effects of control versus improvement oriented evaluation systems (Vroeijensteijn and Acherman, 1990). This type of research analyzes the technical difficulties involved in designing protocols that accurately assess and compare different academic programs, schools or departments, but does not pay much attention to apraisees ’ cognitive processes beyond trying to understand the impact of different designs on commitment. In organization studies there is a great deal of research that has addressed the role of cognition in organizational change and that can help researchers investigate more thoroughly the underlying mechanisms that make quality evaluations in universities more or less successful. Recent studies in that area have paid increasing attention to the sensemaking processes of organizational members who carry out the changes initiated b