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Just Published: Populism Kneecaps Public Sector Innovation
I’ve just published a paper in the leading academic journal Public Management Review entitled “Public Sector Innovation in a Context of Radical Populism.” In it I discuss the key characteristics of both radical populism (xenophobia, anti-elitism) and public sector innovation (a much longer list). Getting down to cases, I show how the Trump Administration’s practices…
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When They Go Low, We Go High
Michelle Obama coined this personal motto in her speech to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, referring to how she and her husband chose to respond to those “who question [his] citizenship and his faith” and to “the hateful language [we] hear on TV.” In the new book on public sector narrative I’m working on, I’ve…
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My Journey from Sage to Guide
I’ve just completed the first draft of the chapter about my narrative pedagogy for my new book. I started by gathering student evaluations and course outlines for 16 times I taught my undergraduate Narrative and Management course between 1991 and 2017. (There might have been more in the early years, but that’s all I found.)…
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Tosca: MeToo
I saw the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s superb production of Tosca last Saturday. What I found most thought-provoking was the character of Baron Scarpia, the villain. Scarpia is chief of police in Rome in 1800. The Kingdom of Naples has just recaptured Rome from the Bonapartist Roman Republic. Scarpia is using any and all…
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Participant Media Comes to Canada: A Creative Management Narrative Exam
Following from the post about my public management exam, here are the questions I asked in my Narrative and Management course last semester that demanded creative answers from my students. In my post of December 10 I discussed the relevance of the 2003 movie The Fog of War in 2017. I had also mentioned this…
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Darkest Hour and Alternative Facts
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that since Darkest Hour was released in late November last year, my review has had between 100 and 200 visits daily, even on the holidays. My discussion of the major historical inaccuracies of the film has also stimulated lively debate among those who have commented. Consider, first, my critics. Lynn Thompson,…
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A Creative Public Management Exam
In setting exams, I combine questions to determine if students understand the concepts taught with questions to determine if they can use the concepts. The latter are often based on recent or future news stories. One question based on future news stories laid out two scenarios for the next Ontario election (June 7, 2018). In…
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Watching The Fog of War in 2017
My narrative and management class ended with The Fog of War, Errol Morris’s 2003 Academy Award winning documentary based on a personal and wide-ranging interview with an elderly Robert McNamara, US Defense Secretary from 1961 to 1968. It is my practice to watch the movies we discuss in class the morning of class. Regardless how…
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Crisis in Catalonia
A crisis simulation is a key component of my public management course, intended as an enjoyable and thought-provoking way of teaching crisis management. Each year I invent a crisis: there are enough situations out there that could escalate into a crisis that it’s easy to imagine a plausible scenario. This year’s concerns the separatist movement…
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Hooking Up With CPAP
A few years ago, my wife discovered something disconcerting about me. I snored regularly and gasped occasionally. She was not amused. I consulted a respirologist, who arranged a sleep study. The study discovered that this was the case when I slept on my back, but hardly at all when I slept on my side. So…
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Pricing Parks and Historic Sites
Timothy Egan recently reported in the New York Times that the Trump Administration is proposing drastic price increases (up to $70 for day-use) and budget cuts ($300 million) to the National Park System. Egan’s article suggested that this was not the result of any plan or strategy, but simply an expression of the view that…
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Understanding The Evidence Room
Yesterday I visited the Evidence Room exhibit, currently at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The Evidence Room, first shown at the 2015 Venice Biennale, is a representation of the evidence displayed at the 2000 libel trial of Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt had been sued in a British court by Holocaust denier David Irving, and had the burden…
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A Long Look at Government at a Glance
This post is a review of the 2017 edition of the OECD’s annual publication Government at a Glance. I begin with a personal disclosure. The team leader for this publication is Zsuzsanna Lonti. I had the honor to be an adviser for her excellent doctoral dissertation on innovative workplace practices in Canadian government. We have…
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My Expected Ancestry
I recently DNA-tested my ancestry, and the result was exactly what I expected: predominantly Eastern European Jewish. More precisely, 84 percent Eastern European Jewish, 10 percent Italy Greece (Sephardic maybe), 2 percent Finland or Northwest Russia, less than 1 percent western or Eastern Europe or north Africa, and zeroes everywhere else included the UK, Ireland,…
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Darkest Hour – Not Even Remotely Based on a True Story
I saw Director Joe Wright’s homage to Winston Churchill – Darkest Hour – at the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend. It will not be released until November 22, so this is a very early review. The movie deeply disappointed me – not because of Gary Oldman’s powerful portrayal of a force of nature –…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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