Organizational Discourse Studies

Cynthia Hardy is a Professor in the Faculty of Management, McGill University. Her publications include Strategies for Retrenchment and Turnaround: The Politics of Survival (De Gruyter, 1990) and Managing Organizational Closure (Gower, 1985). Linda L. Putnam (Ph.D., University of Minnesota; M.A., University of Wisconsin) joined the Department of Communication at Santa Barbara in 2007 after serving as a Regent's Professor and the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. At Texas A&M, she was also Department Head (1993-1998) and Director of the Program on Conflict and Dispute Resolution in the Bush School of Government and Public Service (1998-2003). Her research focuses on negotiation and conflict management in organizations, discourse studies in organizations, and gender and negotiation. Her early research centered on communication strategies and tactics in teacher's bargaining. Using a discourse lens, this early work also examined arguments, narratives, and rituals in labor negotiations. Her gender research applied a feminist lens to rethinking organizational theories and traditional bargaining and her discourse work in organizations highlighted the contradictions and dialectics that emerged in formal negotiations and organizational communication.