“Forgive Me If I Was Misunderstood!”: Attempts at Public Retraction by Grupo Madero in a Context of Crisis

Abstract

Organizations tell their stories through advertising, corporate videos, and other media resources, such as digital platforms, to reaffirm their organizational identity, values, and marketing strategies. This article analyzes how the founder of the Madero Group's public retraction reshaped the organization’s identity amid a reputational crisis over the number of deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Methodologically, we employed documentary research combined with narrative analysis. The research corpus consisted of speeches by businessman Luiz Durski Júnior, available on YouTube, institutional videos, and two statements by the businessman, published on his Instagram, related to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the analysis, we identified a trend toward dissociating the businessman’s narrative from that of the Madero Group, with the following attempts at neutralization: a culture of denial, acknowledgment and partial isolation, denial of intent, and, finally, an apology. These attempts to avoid accountability functioned as a field of contention that reshaped the meanings of organizational storytelling, allowing the businessman to oscillate between denial and accountability. As a contribution to the field of organizational studies, this research highlights how the use of social media platforms can reshape organizational identity and identifies how engaged social media users can reject organizational narratives and engage in boycotts.