The Impact of Information Sources on the Quality Values Promoted in the Romanian Universities

In order to make the quality systems functional and efficient, managers have to deal with orienting the organizational culture towards quality. In this context, promoting the quality values through the most efficient sources of information is an instrumental challenge. This challenge becomes even more powerful for the higher education institutions which are not functioning by the same rules as the economic agents. Therefore, our research purpose was to determine if the sources of information used by the members of the academic community may influence the quality values that are promoted and desired in the Romanian public universities. In order to achieve our goal, we developed a survey based on questionnaire among the members of the academic community from five Romanian public universities (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, University of Bucharest, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, West University of Timisoara) and we applied a logistic regression analysis. The analysis was conducted on two levels – current and desired situation – and the research sample was represented by 1165 persons. The results have showed that using direct observation, university's brochures and other advertising materials have a powerful impact on the quality values currently promoted while these together with other sources of information influence the desired quality values.