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Re-encountering Lorne Weil: A Narrative of Reinvention
Last week I was reading Walter Keichel’s The Lords of Strategy, a history of strategic management, a field in which both academics and consultants have made important conceptual contributions. Early on, there was a somewhat inside-baseball chapter about the development of the market growth-industry share matrix by the Boston Consulting Group in the late Sixties.…
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Statistics Canada: The Administrative Will or the Political Won
Yes Minister once referred to the clash between the political will and the administrative won’t, but in the case of retaining the mandatory long-form census, I think it is more appropriate to reverse the terms. Chief Statistician Munir Sheik’s resignation on a matter of principle is extraordinary and courageous. I heard him speak once or…
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The Census Long Form: Different Messages from Politicians and Public Servants
The census issue not only refuses to go away but during the last week has become more contentious. While more and more voices are calling more loudly for retaining the mandatory long form, the government is sticking more adamantly with the voluntary form. StatsCan is doing what public servants should be doing. They have accepted…
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Why Management Professors Should Write More Books
It is paradoxical that while so many books about management are being published, so few of them are by management professors. There are three mutually reinforcing reasons for this. First, many fields within management have adopted a natural sciences research model that emphasizes publishing academic journal articles rather than books. Second, the research component of…
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The Chief Narrative Officer
Last week’s post discussed two anthems traditionally performed at the Last Night of the Proms, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. There is a third, “Rule, Britannia!” which celebrates the Royal Navy. And the idea of celebrating the Royal Navy takes me by the following logic to today’s blog, the last in the series…
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Building the Empire or Building Jerusalem?
Last week, improbably, I attended the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Last Night of the Proms concert. This came about because my older son had come to enjoy Elgar’s 1st and 4th Pomp and Circumstance marches, which led to a conversation about the 1st march being traditionally played at the Last Night of the Proms, which led…
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Small Rooms and Social Class in Management Narratives
In this post I will discuss two of the questions on the exam in the graduate narratives course. The first question, noting that some movies about managers are filmed almost entirely in indoor settings while others often use public spaces and outdoor settings, asked students to give two examples of each and discuss the advantages…
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Roy Halladay vs. the G-20 Summit
One of the questions on my recent public management exam asked students to resolve the logistical conflicts between the G-20 Summit, scheduled for June 26-27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and baseball games between the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies at the Rogers Centre next door. The Phillies’ pitcher at one of those…
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Closed and Open Politics
C.P. Snow, in Strangers and Brothers, his series of eleven novels about life in academe, business, and government, often referred to “closed politics.” By this he meant decisions made on the basis of confidential consultations among politicians and public servants and announced as a fait accompli. There is, of course, another side to political life.…
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Hung Parliament or Minority Government?
As the UK election approaches, with the prospect of no clear majority, let’s think a bit about what happens on May 7. Unaccustomed to such situations, people in the UK refer to it as a hung Parliament, a term that suggests political immobility. Canadians, who have had considerable such experience at the federal level refer…
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Cultural Travel and Foodie Travel
First, an explanation for my silence for most of the month. One week I was in Cambridge, MA for the end of the week (when I normally post), and I have also been busy preparing and grading exams, doing my annual reports for the university, writing a grant application, and revising a paper for resubmission.…
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Standing Up to the Russians: Return of A Presidential Narrative
In my graduate narratives course, our narrative-of-the-week feature has frequently looked at how journalists incorporate narratives at the start of their articles to capture the reader’s attention. This is an alternative to the standard inverted pyramid model that involves summarizing the entire story in the first paragraph. My guess is that roughly 80 percent of…
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Presenting Complex Narratives on Film: Three Different Approaches
During the last three weeks, my graduate narratives course has looked at three films, each an adaptation of an historical book: North Country, based on the book Class Action about the Jensen versus Eveleth Taconite legal battle over sexual harassment; All the President’s Men, based on the book by that name; and Charlie Wilson’s War,…
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Chinese President Taken Hostage by Tibetans at G20 Summit: What If?
Last week’s public management class was about crisis management, and I always start with a simulation. The scenario I came up with this year involved a high-level hostage-taking at the upcoming G20 summit in Toronto. Somehow, a group called the Tibetan Liberation Organization takes President Hu of China hostage in his hotel suite. Students were…
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Simulating the Ontario Budget Process
Over the last three weeks, I had the students in my public management course simulate the Ontario budget process, and here’s what happened. I assigned them to two-person teams, including the premier and chief of staff, minister and deputy minister of finance and of the largest program departments (Health; Education; Training, Colleges, and Universities; Community…
- 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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