The management of polar expeditions

Pascal Lièvre, a logistics researcher who is an enthusiast for polar expeditions, decided to combine his work and his passion. An expedition crossing one thousand two hundred kilometres of icy and windlashed wastes on skis, running the risks of avalanches, crossing crevasses, braving storms, broken ice floes and polar bears, requires serious preparation both with respect to planning and knowing how to react to various, unexpected situations. To study this type of organisation, not only in terms of its results but also as an emergent process, two observation studies were put in place. One was more concerned with life as experienced in a group, and the other, of which Géraldine Rix was in charge, concerned the subjective personal experiences of those taking part from the beginning to the end of the project.