ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER IN BRUMADINHO: ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT ON THE REPUTATION OF VALE S.A.

Abstract

The company Vale do Rio Doce was created in 1942 as a mixed capital corporation, being privatized in 1997. The company operates in 30 countries producing nickel, coal, copper, manganese, ferroalloys, iron ore and pellets. In 2019, a dam owned by the mining company, in the municipality of Brumadinho, failed and caused one of the biggest environmental disasters in Brazil, which could affect the company's reputation and its legitimacy before society to continue to exist. The general objective of this work is to analyze the impact of the dam failure on the company's reputation. The study is deductive, descriptive, comparative, quantitative, case study and documental, analyzing the company's reputation in five dimensions (media, academy, company, society and by the border of the last two). The findings showed a synergy between the dimensions, and in all of them there was a behavior that in the years before the disaster, the company had a reputation that guaranteed its legitimacy and, in 2019, this reputation was affected, but communication The mining company's organizational structure managed to recover its reputation and maintain the legitimacy to continue operating.