Narratives and Sensemaking of an Organizationally-Based Environmental Disaster

This work investigates the narratives of corporations, public agencies, politicians, unions, lawyers, public attorneys and community in different public inquiries undertaken as a response to an organizationally-based environmental disaster in Brazil. In order to understand the phenomenon, this paper creates a framework that integrates sensemaking, narrative analysis and theater metaphor. Then we use the conceptual framework to analyze five public inquiries of an ongoing pollution caused by Shell’s actions of producing, storing and dumping toxic chemical products in Vila Carioca, São Paulo, Brazil since the early 1940s. The analysis uncovers relationships between public management, corporations and society through their narratives, which are imbued with contradictions, revealing how meanings were selected, legitimized, codified and institutionalized.