A prActicAl guide Benchmarking in european Higher education

3.2 Benchmarking and the Quality
Movement
Benchmarking has emerged in the world of (business) organisations together
with some other innovations, in particular the ‘quality movement’. The organised
attention for quality and benchmarking share an interest in the organisation’s
performance. It may be useful to give a quick tour d’horizon
regarding quality, associated terms and other concepts that one may encounter
in the neighbourhood of benchmarking. It should be realised, though,
that there is not a single set of definitions that is ‘correct’: many authors have
different opinions. Our use of terms is given below.
Quality
Quality is an inherently debatable term and much has been written about it
without leading to a single, final answer to the question how it should be defined.
The major issue is whether quality is part of the product or service, or
depends on the customer. In other words: Should we talk of the quality of
university education, or only of student satisfaction?
The fairly authoritative ISO definition of the term ‘quality’ is: “The totality of
features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to
satisfy stated or implied needs” (ISO 9000 – www.iso.org). This definition has
elements of both views in it, referring to “characteristics of a good or service”,
but always from the perspective of satisfying “stated or implied needs” (though
it is left implicit if those are customers’ needs or, e.g. accreditors’ needs).
A Practical Guide - Benchmarking in European Higher Education
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