ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rate of policy innovation by local education authorities (LEAs) for the use of microcomputers in education. It seeks to describe how LEAs have varied in the speed with which they have produced policy and the type of policy they produced. The chapter attempts to understand why LEAs varied in their rate of policy innovation by examining their organisational processes. In order to understand variations in the timing and duration of stages, the organisational processes that affect policy innovation have to be considered. An understanding of the timing and duration of educational policy innovation can be gained using the three fundamental concepts of scrutiny, conflict and centralisation. The chapter explores particular aspects of these concepts in relation to the timing and duration of two of the different stages of policy innovation: initiation and implementation. The concepts derived from organisation theory provide a range of tools with which to understand the dynamics of educational policy innovation.
