Managing the Meaning of a Sour Gas Well Blowout: The Public Culture of Organizational Disasters

Abstract

This research essay addresses the rhetorical, meaning management practices used in public accounts of organizational disasters. Fourteen newspaper arti cles which chronologically constitute the public emergence of the 1982 Lodge pole, Alberta sour gas well blowout are used as data to illustrate how interpretive practices used in cultural accounts transform organizational events into public problems. The practices discussed are: (1) the construction of social objects and effects as sensemaking resources, (2) normalizing events by constructing accounts which minimize disastrous effects, and (3) using irony to make events appear abnormal, interesting and fundamentally disruptive. The paper thus addresses how public, cultural accounts socially construct organizational dis asters and how organizational disasters both breach and sustain the myth of social order. The paper concludes with discussion of practical implications this research has for organizational stakeholders.