Quality assurance and quality development represent central challenges of higher education institutions (HEIs). In this context, the term quality culture has gained increasing attention. Quality culture refers to an organizational culture, which emphasizes the importance of continuous quality improvement, shared attitudes, and commitment towards quality. Despite growing discussion of quality culture, sound empirical approaches that capture this key construct have not been developed systematically. Therefore, we developed the 'Quality Culture Inventory' (QCI), which represents a comprehensive approach to operationalizing quality culture in HEIs. In a first step, this paper summarizes the development and empirical validation of the QCI, which comprises six dimensions (e.g. quality-oriented commitment, leadership, and communication). In a second step, relationships between the QCI dimensions and several potential outcome measures (e.g. job satisfaction) are reported. The QCI allows HEIs to evaluate their current state of quality culture based on empirical evidence and develop target-oriented recommendations for quality improvement.