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Lincoln’s Leadership Lessons
The Sunday New York Times business section recently (January 26, 2013) ran a piece by Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn entitled “Lincoln’s School of Management. “. Prof. Koehn has developed a teaching case on President Lincoln that she uses with mid-career students. In the Times article, in addition to her own discussion of Lincoln’s…
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Zero Dark Thirty: An “Heroic” Narrative?
Structurally, Zero Dark Thirty rigorously follows the heroic fable pattern. It begins by replaying, over a dark screen, voices of people trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and it ends with a real-time reenactment of the moment of vengeance, the successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. But it takes a…
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Canada’s Government Advertising Addiction
I’ve recently read two papers that, together, make the case that the Government of Canada has an addiction to advocacy advertising. Christopher Stoney and Tamara Krawchenko’s “Transparency and accountability in infrastructure stimulus spending: a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and US programs” is the lead article in the December 2012 issue of Canadian Public Administration (volume…
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Lincoln: A Roll-Call Vote as High Art
In his review of “Lincoln” last weekend, New York Times critic A.O. Scott began by noting the “paradox that American movies – a great democratic art form, if ever there was one – have not done a very good job of representing American democracy … The squalor and vigor, the glory and corruption of the…
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Argo: A Story of Heroic Public Servants
When my twelve year old son and I entered the theater for the matinee showing of Argo last Saturday, his immediate observation was that “everyone here is probably old enough to remember the hostage crisis.” Despite his ageist attitude, he enjoyed Argo tremendously. So did I. In its essence, Argo is a story of heroic…
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Arbitrage: Actually, it was Fraud
I continue scanning the cinema for new films about private sector managers, to be analyzed in the book I’m writing or discussed in my course on narratives. There have been more than a few inspired by the economic crisis, the most compelling of which is Charles Ferguson’s 2010 documentary Inside Job. The latest to hit…
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The Sovereigntists Meet the Bond Vigilantes
With the prospect of a PQ Government in Quebec after next Tuesday’s election and a third referendum (a syndrome called the “neverendum”) on the horizon, I will reflect a bit on how global capital markets – the bond vigilantes – might respond. There is some relevant historical precedent. In the run-up to the too-close-to-call 1995…
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Swiss Bank Accounts or a One-Term Proposition: Attack Ads, Round Two
After some vacation time, I’m now back to the blog. The latest round in advertising for the US presidential campaign features attack ads by the Obama campaign and by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative superpac. The Obama campaign’s attack ad starts with Barack Obama’s affirmation – in his voice accompanied by his physical presence –…
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Peter Aucoin’s Yahrtzeit
Our colleague Peter Aucoin passed away on July 7, 2011, almost a year ago. Yahrtzeit is a Yiddish word meaning anniversary (literally, time of year), and Jews are obligated to observe the Yahrtzeit of the deaths of members of their immediate family (parents, siblings, children). Within Judaism, it is a way of ensuring that everyone…
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Upbeat Citigroup 200-year anniversary ad
While travelling in Australia, I repeatedly saw Citigroup’s latest advertising campaign, which readers can access on Citi’s website (citigroup.com) or its YouTube channel. The ad is intended to “change the story” – a term used cynically in the movie Wag the Dog – from Citi’s current perilous state to its glorious history. Citigroup’s precursor, the…
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Highway 407’s Unsurprising Next Step
Having co-authored a book about the history of Ontario’s 407 ETR up to 2005 and having watched its evolution since then, I feel obligated to comment on its latest development, the Ontario Government’s announcement yesterday of Highway 407’s Eastern extension. Almost everything about the announcement was predictable, and I will explain why. Given its battle…
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The First Obama Campaign Ads: Heroic Identification or Hypocrisy and Corruption?
I’ve just watched one of Obama’s first campaign ads and an attack ad sponsored by the Senate Republicans. I’ll show how both fit into my four quadrant narrative framework, and speculate about whether each will work. The Obama campaign ad is a one-minute distillation of the Obama campaign’s seventeen minute core video “The Road We’ve…
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Small-Town Computers and Big-Time Bond Defaults: Two Challenging Exam Questions
On final exams I always try to challenge students by including one or two questions that require them to apply what they have learned in new and different contexts. I had two such questions in this year’s public management class. The first began with Industry Canada’s recent termination of the Community Access Program that provided…
- 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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