Sandford Borins – författare

Innovating with Integrity presents a comprehensive portrait of the local heroes—front-line public servants and middle managers—who are reinventing state and local government, and it offers practical recommendations for innovating successfully.

Based on a study of more than 200 successful government innovations, this book is the first large-scale, systematic analysis of innovation in American government. Sandford Borins identifies the components of integrity that he finds in successful innovators, including the intellectual discipline to plan rigorously and to establish measurable goals; the ability to collaborate with others and accommodate criticism; and a willingness to mobilize both the private sector and the community. In addition to analyzing the common traits driving new initiatives, Borins shows the distinctive differences among six areas of innovation: information technology, organizational redesign, environmental and energy management, policing and community development, social services, and education. This trenchant analysis of what initiatives actually work and why contributes to both the practice and theory of public management. Its practical advice will be especially valuable for front-line government workers, public managers, union leaders, agency heads, politicians, and all concerned with reforming government.

Governing Fables: Learning from Public Sector Narratives advocates the importance of narrative for public servants, exemplifies it with a rigorously selected and analyzed set of narratives, and imparts narrative skills politicians and public servants need in their careers. Governing Fables turns to narratology, the inter-disciplinary study of narrative, for a conceptual framework that is applied to a set of narratives engaging life within public organizations, focusing on works produced during the last twenty-five years in the US and UK. The genres discussed include British government narratives inspired by and reacting to Yes Minister, British appeasement narratives, American political narratives, the Cuban Missile Crisis narrative, jury decision-making narratives, and heroic teacher narratives. In each genre lessons are presented regarding both effective management and essential narrative skills.

Governing Fables is intended for public management and political science scholars and practitioners interested in leadership and management, as well as readers drawn to the political subject matter and to the genre of political films, novels, and television series.