Going Beyond Heroic Leaders in Development

Leadership is an under‐studied topic in international development. When the topic is broached it is usually to support what might be called a “hero dependency”: One or other individual is identified as the hero of a past event (or the hero‐to‐be of a future event). This article argues that this dependency is problematic, however, because (i) heroes have not emerged in many contexts for long periods and individuals who may have been considered heroes in the past often turned out less than heroic, (ii) heroes are at least as much the product of their contexts as they turned out to be the shapers of such, and (iii) stories about hero‐leaders doing special things mask the way such special things emerge from the complex interactions of many actors—some important and some mundane. Notions of hero‐leadership in development are less convincing when one appreciates these arguments. Referencing broader work on leadership (and some in the development space itself) the article calls development theorists and practitioners to go beyond the heroic leader perspective in thinking about who leads development. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identification and comparison of electrical tapes using instrumental and statistical techniques: I. Microscopic surface texture and elemental composition

Comparisons of polyvinyl chloride electrical tape typically rely upon evaluating class characteristics such as physical dimensions, surface texture, and chemical composition. Given the various techniques that are available for this purpose, a comprehensive study has been undertaken to establish an optimal analytical scheme for electrical tape comparisons. Of equal importance is the development of a quantitative means for sample discrimination. In this study, 67 rolls of black electrical tape representing 34 different nominal brands were analyzed via scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy. Differences in surface roughness, calendering marks, and filler particle size were readily apparent, including between some rolls of the same nominal brand. The relative amounts of magnesium, aluminum, silicon, sulfur, lead, chlorine, antimony, calcium, titanium, and zinc varied greatly between brands and, in some cases, could be linked to the year of manufacture. For the first time, quantitative differentiation of electrical tapes was achieved through multivariate statistical techniques, with 36 classes identified within the sample population. A single-blind study was also completed where questioned tape samples were correctly associated with known exemplars. Finally, two case studies are presented where tape recovered from an improvised explosive device is compared with tape recovered from a suspect.