Golden reputation wanted for a gold producer. The case of the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation

Abstract

Inappropriate stakeholder communication often generates risks or even dangers to the organizations which are not aware of the importance of a proper flow of information to/from its publics. “Rosia Montana Gold Corporation”, a Canada-based company specialized in gold extraction, has initiated since 1996 a project to extract gold from the perimeter Rosia Montana (Western Carpathians, county of Alba, Romania). Although the technical documentation has been submitted back in 2004 to the authorities to be endorsed and approved, the approval is still pending due to a great amount of negative public perceptions often turned to hostile behaviors. In order to diminish this hostility, the company has started a huge communication campaign founded on factuality in its attempt to extract gold in Romania. However, the results are still unsatisfactory, even if the amount of negative perceptions has been lowered in a certain measure. In our paper we would like to analyze, based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and quantitative analysis methods, several influences produced by the organizational communication done so far over the organization itself, as well as over stakeholders such as the local community in Rosia Montana, public institutions, and non-governmental organizations.