The concept of the "public mission" of higher education institutions has several dimensions. In the broader and more general sense, it is the institution's public mission to provide knowledge, critical reflection and discourse on the larger and more fundamental questions of society. This general function has become recently challenged as some governments openly question or simply dismiss scientific evidence. The discussion of this more fundamental dimension of "society engagement" is therefore very timely. The second meaning, "community engagement", emphasizes the more instrumental dimension: collaboration of various kinds between higher education institutions and their "communities". To many universities and other higher education institutions are attributed three major, interrelated missions: education, the generation of new knowledge, and engagement with society or "the community". While the processes and structures associated with teaching and research are relatively well defined and analyzed, this is less the case with the public mission. Mission statements, websites and promotional materials often underline an institution's commitment to community engagement and public responsibility. However, despite the growing importance of higher education's public mission at a declamatory level, its implementation in practice is not clear-cut. The wide range of activity incorporated in universities and colleges' community engagement suggests that a precise definition of the public mission is difficult, and that organizing and coordinating such external activities and internal policies and practices is a complex task. This task might begin with articulating, generally, the current and future public mission of higher education, and what difference this mission makes to society and the community as well as to the higher education institutions. Another question is which specific public missions apply to which universities and higher education institutions? This will depend on their respective internal characteristics (e.g. traditions, mission, structures and policies), external environment (e.g., demographics, sociocultural, economic and political), and the variety of the institution's stakeholders, both internal and external.

PurposeQuality management in Greek higher education at least until 2006 was in an early and debated stage. The intent of this paper is to present the extent of use of the ISO standards in Greek universities till 2006 and simultaneously to evaluate whether adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management tools is consistent with DiMaggio and Powell's notions of isomorphism (coercive, normative, and mimetic).Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a mixed‐methods approach with sequential data collection with several alternations between quantitative and qualitative methods.FindingsIt is found that ISO‐oriented quality management system is fruitfully adopted in units only if all three types of neo‐institutional pressures (coercive, normative and mimetic) are present. These results and the high response rate suggest that there is a quality movement at the micro level in Greek higher education.Research limitations/implicationsQuality management (QM) research within the relatively uncharted Greek universities poses multiple challenges, e.g. in handling politically sensitive subjects, which may benefit readers in overcoming theirs.Originality/valueThe significance of the paper lies in the fact that no existing studies have investigated the adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management system in Greek universities, utilizing neo‐institutional theory and a mixed method research design. Especially relevant is that the study focuses on quality management at the micro level of units within higher education institutions. The study demonstrates how to distinguish different isomorphic pressures empirically.

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