Sandford Borins grew up in Toronto and did his undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard in economics and public administration. He is Professor of Public Management in the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Chair of the Division of Management and Economics at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.
He is the author of numerous articles on public management, as well as four books. The books include: Political Management in Canada, co-authored with the Hon. Allan Blakeney, former premier of Saskatchewan (a second edition is being published this year by University of Toronto Press), Innovating with Integrity: How Local Heroes are Transforming American
Government(Georgetown University Press, 1998), Investments in Failure: Five Government Corporations that Cost the Canadian Taxpayer Billions (Methuen, 1986), and The Language of the Skies: The Bilingual Air Traffic Control Conflict in Canada (McGill-Queens, 1983). The Language of the Skies, an extended case study of linguistic conflict, was recognized as one of the twenty best books in English supported by the Social Science Federation of Canada between 1940 and 1990.
Professor Borins has had a wide range of professional experience. In 1989, he was the first Adjunct Professor at the Canadian Centre for Management Development and, in that capacity, designed the Centre's Advanced Management Programme for senior federal public servants. He was a member of the selection panel for the first Institute of Public Administration of Canada Innovative Public Management Award in 1990 and for the Amethyst Award for Excellence in the Ontario Public Service in 1994 and 1995, and chaired the selection panel for the Amethyst Award in 1996 and 1997. He was a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation from 1995 to 1998.
His current research deals with public management innovation. In addition to his recently- completed book on public management innovation in the United States, he is working with co- authors Ken Kernaghan and Brian Marson on a book about that topic in Canada. He also written several articles arguing that the set of reforms known as the "new public management" (e.g. service quality initiatives, performance standards, application of information technology) constitute a new paradigm in public administration. In 1994, he was the rapporteur at the first biennial conference of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM); his report, entitled Government in Transition: A New Paradigm in Public Administration, has been widely cited as a comprehensive statement of the new paradigm. He has been rapporteur at four subsequent CAPAM conferences.
Updated July 08, 2001