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I have an HP Color LaserJet (CM 1015MFP) Printer and it’s bankrupting me. The black toner cartridges cost $100 for 2500 pages, which is reasonable. The devil-in-the-details are the three (cyan, yellow, and magenta) color cartridges, which together cost $300 for 2000 pages. (If you do the math, that’s $.04 per page for black and $ .15 per page for color).

Even if you do all your printing in black and white, the toner level in the color cartridges mysteriously, but inexorably, declines. And when the toner in the three color cartridges runs out, the printer stops printing, even if you are only using black. To restart the printer, you must buy another $ 300 pack of the three color cartridges.

I bought the printer because, even though I print mostly documents, I wanted to have the option to occasionally print in color for the kids. Big mistake! I had thought that if I did that the color cartridge would last several years. The longest a color cartridge seems to last, even if I do all my printing in black, is 6 months.

I would advise anyone reading this – and I hope there are many people who do – that HP color laser jet printers are designed to force you to use the really expensive color toner even if you don’t want to. I would never buy another one, and I urge you not to make my mistake.

My article “Making Narrative Count: A Narratological Approach to Public Management Innovation” has now been published by the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the top-ranked public administration journal. Here is an abstract of the article:

Though the use of narrative has become widespread through many disciplines, it has yet to establish a strong footing in public administration. The article first explains why narrative analysis has not been incorporated into mainstream public administration as the latter has become increasingly empirical, quantitative, and hypothesis-driven. It then discusses a number of previous attempts to introduce narrative into public administration.

Next, the article outlines a number of key narratological concepts that could readily be applied to the field. These include the distinction between fable, narrative, and text; narrative polyphony; and dominant and counter-fables. Demonstrating the possibilities they offer, the concepts are applied to the analysis of the 31 finalists in the 2008 and 2009 Innovations in American Government Awards to identify a dominant innovation fable incorporating incremental problem-solving and inter-organizational cooperation. This innovation fable is contrasted to those identified in previous research, such as the organization turnaround or the front-line innovation.

Because the Awards application process results in three distinct narratives – a detailed paper application, a site visit report, and an oral presentation to the selection panel – the analysis focuses on the differences among them, with the application form representing an insider’s story written by experts for an expert audience, the site visit report often incorporating a counter-narrative that points out the innovation’s unresolved conflicts or uncertainties, and the oral presentation functioning as an advocacy narrative directed at a generalist audience. This analysis is applied to one of the award winners, the US Intelligence Community Civilian Joint Duty Program.

The article concludes with suggestions for further narratological research about public management innovation, taking advantage of the new application form to the Innovation Awards which was designed to elicit more explicit narratives. More generally, it raises possibilities for public administration scholars to incorporate narratological concepts and methods into their research.

If you are interested in reading the article online, it’s doi (digital object identifier) is 10.1093/jopart/muq088. You can enter it at www.doi.org and it will take you to the article. You can also access it from JPART’s website. If you have any difficulty finding it, email me and I’ll email you the article.