Exploring strategic change in extreme environments: A joint approach between researchers in management and linguistics

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A joint approach between researchers in management and linguistics to explore strategic change in extreme environments Our presentation draws on a real-time, in situ ethnographic study of a strategic change episode during the Darwin mountaineering expedition in Patagonia. With our colleagues, we conducted an original analysis by combining management and linguistic researchers’ tools in order to explore the role of time and space dimensions in sensemaking, and we linked the role of chronotopes with radical change implementation.In our presentation, we will address two methodological considerations. First, we will highlight how the choice of this extreme context is appropriate to further explore organizational processes, such as radical change. Second, we will underline how a new approach combining “old tools” in the fields of management and linguistic studies can be of interest from this perspective.Specifically, we analysed in our study the sensemaking process during a specific episode and conducted a discursive analysis of two data categories (logbook and conversations). We focused on the spatial and temporal dimensions in order to elucidate why the alpinists accepted to “drop their boat” (serving as a base camp) and implemented this change. Working together, we discovered that change implementation could be explained by a change in chronotopes. Moreover, chronotopes could be used as a common tool for researchers in linguistics and management to understand how a discourse genre is ordered as well as how a radical change is implemented.