Sandford Borins

I just read Winston Churchill CEO a new book by Alan Axelrod, who describes himself as a prolific author of business and popular history books. The book is a most recent example of the “lessons from …” genre of business books. The book has several strengths. Axelrod is a lucid and eloquent writer, easy to…

The 1964 movie Seven Days in May in a fictional way combines the concerns raised by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Watergate break-in. Seven Days in May is about a plot by the joint chiefs of staff to launch a coup because the president has signed a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union under…

The 1976 film “All the President’s Men” is fascinating for its perspectives on the craft of investigative journalism and on the Nixon Presidency, which was the ultimate object of the investigation. The movie shows in great detail what investigative journalists do and how they do it: searching for disgruntled front-line staff willing to provide leads,…

I’ve begun work on the chapter on modern American political narratives, a very rich genre with many fascinating exemplars. One of the modern classics is Allen Drury’s Pulitzer prize winning 1959 novel, and director Otto Preminger’s 1962 film, Advise and Consent. Taking its title from one of the powers of the Senate enumerated in the…

This Eighties BBC television satire about the conflicted but codependent relationship between politics and bureaucracy over a quarter century later bears all the markers of a classic. Its DVD and paperback versions continue to sell well, many clips are available on YouTube and elsewhere, and it ranked sixth in a 2004 poll to choose Britain’s…

Over the next three posts my intention is to look at three narratives, two of which have become classics and one that I predict will become a classic. The two confirmed classics are Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove and Tony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s television series Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, and my…

There is a classic dominant fable about the transformational teacher in an urban ghetto high school. The school is failing in its mission: the students aren’t learning, but they are getting into trouble. A transformational teacher arrives on the scene and, through hard work, long hours, commitment to excellence, and empathy for the students wins…

Dominant and counter-fables are key concepts in my work on narrative, so I’d better explain them. I start my research about narrative by looking for narratives – movies, novels, plays – that deal in a serious way with organizations and leadership. That immediately rules out those where the organization is just the setting for a…

I recently discussed the 1957 film Twelve Angry Men in a session of my MBA Narrative and Management course dealing with decision-making in small groups. The film, adapted for the theatre in recent years, is widely regarded as a classic. The question I posed of my students is why. What makes it a classic? We…