Putnam, Linda

Emeritus Professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (US), Linda Putnam (US, 1945) is considered to be the founder of the field of organizational communication.

In the early 80s, she published the book Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach (1983), a landmark that, for the first time, reclaims the relevance of combining critical and interpretive perspectives when analyzing organizations. Her contributions helped improve scientific rigor in an area that had been mainly dominated, up to that moment, by practical-oriented, business approaches. She has made important efforts in developing gender studies, negotiation, conflict and discursive approaches in the field.

She has received several awards and recognitions in the field. She is a former director and a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). From early on in her career, Linda Putnam has focused on ensuring that all collectives are heard in organizations. Because of this, she has paid attention to silenced voices and to the relevance of emotions and context in organizational communication. A commitment to multidisciplinary approaches has been a constant throughout her long career. She is undoubtedly a referent in the interpretative, critical and feminist turn of communication research. She is an eclectic researcher, very human, loved and admired by her colleagues and students.

Selected publications:

• Putnam, L. L., & Pacanowsky, M. (Eds.). (1983). Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach. Sage.
• Putnam, L. L. (1983). The interpretive perspective: An alternative to functionalism. In L. Putnam & M. Pacanowky (Eds.), Communication and organizations. An interpretive approach (pp. 13-31). Sage.
• Putnam, L. L., & Roloff, M. E. (Eds.). (1992). Communication and negotiation. Sage.
• Putnam, L. L., & Mumby, D.K. (Eds.). (2014). The SAGE handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods. Sage.