Cynthia Hardy

Discourse-based approaches to studying organizations have grown in significance over the last 25 years. This accessible and insightful book exemplifies how to use a discursive approach to study organizations. By drawing on her own empirical research, Cynthia Hardy aligns key theoretical assumptions with a range of case studies to demonstrate the value and adaptability of a discursive approach.The book presents the key theoretical assumptions associated with a discursive approach and shows how to align them with the design of specific empirical studies. Cynthia Hardy also illustrates how data collection and analysis can be customized to suit the issues under investigation. By reviewing empirical settings that range from older workers to refugees, from businesses to voluntary organizations, from strategy making to inter-organizational collaboration, and from environmental regulation to chemical risk, the author shows the value and adaptability of this approach. Forward-thinking, the book concludes with a look towards the future challenges of the discursive approach, covering specific issues of resistance to and reflexivity in research on discourse.Demonstrating the importance of empirical work, data collection, and analysis, this book will be a useful guide on discursive approach for students of organization and management studies. It will also prove useful for researchers studying HIV/AIDS organizations, refugees, and environmental regulation, which are particularly focused on in the book.

In her new book, Crossing MeridiansTM: Engineering Disruption to Become a More Effective Leader, the author shares her tested approach to leadership enrichment and provides a workbook to help leaders plan their development journeys. Cynthia thoughtfully shows aspiring to mid-career leaders how to move from their familiar ways of working and thinking to heightened leadership. With her Crossing Meridians approach, which is both a mindset and a method, Cynthia provides the framework for a deeply personal, step-by-step approach to leadership development that guides leaders through learning cycles. In Crossing Meridians, leaders are encouraged to engineer their own disruption-taking on uncomfortable, more complex development actions that allow them to cross divides while gaining the essential leadership capabilities of empathy, openness, and resiliency. Leaders are shown how to define their Beginning Meridians, those early, pervasive influences that shape us. They also are shown how to envision their larger leadership and target, select, and execute development actions that move them from their Beginning Meridians to their New Meridians.

In her new book, Crossing MeridiansTM: Engineering Disruption to Become a More Effective Leader, the author shares her tested approach to leadership enrichment and provides a workbook to help leaders plan their development journeys. Cynthia thoughtfully shows aspiring to mid-career leaders how to move from their familiar ways of working and thinking to heightened leadership. With her Crossing Meridians approach, which is both a mindset and a method, Cynthia provides the framework for a deeply personal, step-by-step approach to leadership development that guides leaders through learning cycles. In Crossing Meridians, leaders are encouraged to engineer their own disruption-taking on uncomfortable, more complex development actions that allow them to cross divides while gaining the essential leadership capabilities of empathy, openness, and resiliency. Leaders are shown how to define their Beginning Meridians, those early, pervasive influences that shape us. They also are shown how to envision their larger leadership and target, select, and execute development actions that move them from their Beginning Meridians to their New Meridians.

Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction is the first book to provide a concise, straightforward guide for students and researchers who are interested in understanding and using discourse analysis. The authors reflect on the practice of analyzing discourse and the potential for revealing the processes of social construction that constitute social and organizational life. Addressed to graduate students, academics, and experienced researchers, this book is a comprehensive guide for those new to discourse analysis as well as for researchers in need of a complement to other modes of inquiry.

Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction is the first book to provide a concise, straightforward guide for students and researchers who are interested in understanding and using discourse analysis. The authors reflect on the practice of analyzing discourse and the potential for revealing the processes of social construction that constitute social and organizational life. Addressed to graduate students, academics, and experienced researchers, this book is a comprehensive guide for those new to discourse analysis as well as for researchers in need of a complement to other modes of inquiry.

In The Politics of Collegiality Hardy uses six case studies to explore how power and collegiality interact within institutional contexts during periods of fiscal restraint. Examining the funding cutbacks implemented by McGill University, Université de Montréal, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto, and Carleton University, Hardy demonstrates that institutional context and retrenchment strategy are linked in such a way that what works in some institutions will not work in others. By offering insights into how financial restrictions have been managed in particular universities, these individual case studies provide a conceptual framework for understanding institutional decision making on a larger scale. Hardy reveals that university administrators must recognize this broader context if conflict is to be avoided and the consensus needed to implement effective retrenchment plans created.