This book originated in the Society for Research into Higher Education annual conference at Leicester University in 2000. Papers were selected for publication around the theme of the implementation of policy at different levels of higher education. The book as a whole is structured around the notion of the ‘implementation staircase’, as the first chapter explains. It was originally published 2002 by Open University Press/SRHE. Because the book went out of print copyright reverted to me, at my request. I wanted to make it available to researchers, managers and others for whom the content remains important and relevant.
I did little to the text of the original book other than give it a new cover, update or remove web links and optimize it for e-book format, though it is now also available again in printed form.