Looking for Clues about Quality: A Multilevel Mixed Design on Quality Management in Greek Universities

Abstract

As methodology, mixed methods (MM) provide a means to facilitate and explain several complex phenomena across various disciplines. Tashakkori and Creswell (2008), identified a nurturing and dynamic intellectual community as one that encourages scholarly debate and intellectual risk‑taking as well as developing graduate students as stewards of their disciplines. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe how a multilevel mixed design was applied to a research project designed to investigate the adoption of quality management in Greek universities through the lens of neo‑institutional theory. Appropriate research design is a critical choice when performing organizational research, especially when the research lacks previous precedents; thus, this gap in the literature empirically investigated these issues by using MM, which led to a process in design development and compatibility to overcome many challenges. This paper presents part of the methodological and pragmatical rationales that guided the choice to use a multilevel study mixed method design by using both concurrent and sequential data collection at the macro, meso, and micro levels in Greek universities.