Rhetorical Typology in Organizational Disasters

Abstract

Traditionally, rhetorical history has been studied as a strategic and competitive advantage for organizations. However, the source of competitive advantage conferred by rhetorical history has neutralized tensions in the everyday practices of the organization. In contrast, we argue that in an organizational disaster the individuals can use three different rhetorical typologies to explain the event preventing sanctions, criticism as well as demobilizing and discrediting other histories. In this qualitative study, we explore the forms of discourse production in the (re)construction of histories related to the Samarco disaster . We analyze how companies can assign or even impose a specific meaning on their past, mobilizing controversy in the stakeholders’ discourses. The theoretical and analytical framework includes literature from the fields of rhetorical history, memory and forgetting and critical discourse analysis. As result, we show how the context of economic development in the region contributed to Samarco occupying a privileged social and discursive position. The company, thus, has the opportunity to strategically mobilize discourses within and outside the organizational context and to influence how the histories of the Samarco disaster are being created, reinterpreting the “Tale of Mud” and investing in discourses and language that can reinforce positions and reproduce the dominant structures.