A study of total quality management and strategic management practices in higher education institutions: A research

Higher education institutions are institutions that have a great influence on the economic, cultural and social development of countries. The fact that higher education institutions have high success criteria takes an important place in the globalizing world. For this reason, countries are working to improve the quality of higher education institutions. This emphasizes the importance of quality studies and Total Quality Management. It takes a long time for quality to be formed and maintained. For this reason, the phenomenon of quality is a strategic consideration. Strategic thinking is also responsible for strategic management in organizations. For this reason, developing and maintaining quality together with strategic planning is among the important duties of strategic management. The main purpose of this study is to examine how a connection can be established between Total Quality Management and strategic management. In this context, it is an examination of the opportunities, challenges and problems faced by universities. In the study, it was planned to analyze inter-university quality studies with the semi-structured interview method with the faculty members and administrative staff who are currently working in the quality commissions of selected universities by using the literature and qualitative research method; However, because of face to face interviews were not possible due to the obstacles brought by the COVID 19 pandemic, the existing questions were sent to the participants via e-mail on the internet and datas were collected. The universe of the research covers three universities, two of which are public universities and one foundation university. As a limitation of the study, interviews with other previously planned universities could not be made due to the cancellation of face to face meetings that were previously planned due to the COVID 19 epidemic, which started to spread rapidly in the world and our country since March 2020.