Although this process may lead to some adaptation to the inspection standards, it
may be problematic in three ways. First of all, the changes that are sometimes made in
this process of institutionalization may be ceremonial or cosmetic (DiMaggio and
Powell 1983). McNamara and O’Hara (2009) for example describe how selfevaluations,
rather than improving the learning capacity of schools, are often undertaken
only as a part of an inspection process and can tend to become an end in
themselves for schools used to facilitate the inspection ‘dialogue’ (Nevo 2006).