Leadership and organizational learning in extreme situations. Lessons of a comparative study of two polar expeditions: one of the greatest disasters (Franklin, 1855) and one the best achievements (Nansen, 1892)
Résumé
This chapter presents a comparative study of two polar expeditions, Nansen's 1893- 1896 expedition to the North Pole and Franklin's 1845 expedition to the North-West Passage. Franklin's expedition is considered one of the greatest disasters in Arctic exploration, while Nansen's expedition is one of its greatest achievements. This articles examines the factors that led to one man's success and another's failure. The key factors seem to be: the consistency of the project with the leader's identity and ambitions, the learning process and the modes of acquiring knowledge from experience, the ability to adapt and to move away from the original plan, the team constitution.