From Quality Control to Quality Monitoring and Organisational Learning

Quality control is an important and integrated part of the scientific system. However, developments in science are changing quality control into quality monitoring. New virtual and fluid organisational forms are emerging. Common boundaries are broken as for example in the “Triple Helix” and the “Mode 2” concepts. And the stakeholders in science are becoming interested in being involved. They want their evaluation criteria to be used, and they want evaluations to be done on a regular basis, because they do not trust the new scientific institutions to be left alone. Quality monitoring changes the assumptions for doing evaluations as part of quality control. Assessment of the societal value of research becomes increasingly important. Finally, quality monitoring emphasises organisational learning rather than controlling quality in scientific organisations.