Géraldine Rix

Pascal Lièvre
email: pascallievre@wanadoo.fr

Geraldine Rix
email: geraldine.rix@univ-bpclermont.fr

Towards a codification of practical knowledge

Keywords: Case study, knowledge management tools, reflective practice, tacit knowledge, codification, knowing-in-action

As practical knowledge seems to have a central place in organisational issues, we focus on possibilities to study and formalize it. From an unusual theoretical perspective, we view practical knowledge as embodied knowing which only is only manifest through action in a particular situation. Although this knowledge is largely implicit, we try to make what is 'articulable' explicit. After highlighting the stakes involved in the codification of practices, we review the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying the method developed.

It is founded on participant observation, a video recording of a situated subjective perspective and an ex post interview using this perspective to aid an actor to make part of his/her practical knowledge explicit. We present its implementation within research on polar expeditions in order to understand how an experienced actor deals with risks. In conclusion, we point out (1) the importance of this kind of data in knowledge management, (2) some lines of further research.

Following Polanyi's theses (1996) and as several other authors have noted [START_REF] Brown | Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Cook | Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing[END_REF][START_REF] Nonaka | The knowledge-creating company[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Knowing in practice: enacting a collective capacity in distributed organizing[END_REF][START_REF] Schön | The reflective practitioner. Basic books[END_REF][START_REF] Tsoukas | The firm as a distributed knowledge system: a constructionist approach[END_REF], we have questioned practical knowledge and its central place in organisational issues [START_REF] Foray | The economics of knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Tsoukas | Do we really understand tacit knowledge? In The Blackwell handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management[END_REF]. In spite of the many developments concerning knowledge management in different kinds of organisation, there are very few methodological propositions to approach knowledge systems and processes [START_REF] Patriotta | On studying organizational knowledge[END_REF]). Without dealing with this whole question, we focus on practical knowledge in the context of its production and on possibilities to study and formalize it. In this way, we try to make a methodological contribution to knowledge management both for researchers and practitioners. This contribution is rooted in unusual theoretical references: whereas " Polanyi (1966) is by tradition the authoritative source for the concept [of tacit knowledge]" (Gourlay 2006, p.60), we refer also to [START_REF] Piaget | Réussir et comprendre PUF[END_REF]. His propositions enable us to view practical knowledge differently, its tacitness, and to understand how it can, to some degree, be articulated.

Practical knowledge is, thus, conceived as "connaissances-en-acte" or knowing-in-action.

Knowing-in-action is viewed as embodied knowing which only manifests itself in by, and during action in a particular situation. Although this knowledge is largely implicit, we try, through the method, to make what is 'articulable' explicit (Yanow & Tsoukas 2007, p.10). In this way, following Vermersch's phenomenological perspective (1999aVermersch's phenomenological perspective ( , 2003)), we attempt to approach the actor's own situated perspective.

After highlighting the stakes involved in the codification of practices, we review the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the method. Then, we present the conditions of its implementation. What follows next is an empirical example, adaptation practices in a polar expedition, in order to illustrate the method. In conclusion, we highlight on the one hand, the importance and the use of this kind of data in knowledge management, on the other, we point out the limits of such results and directions of further research.

Knowledge management and challenges of codification of practices

The codification of practices begins with writing. According to [START_REF] Goody | The domestication of savage mind[END_REF], this operation expresses a society's will to make up for the weaknesses and uncertainties of human memory with the aim of storing knowledge, perceived as a learning program. But writing also has cognitive effects on society, by developing capacities for abstraction and the critical function, which play a specific role in encouraging new knowledge production. This operation takes on a particular value today in relation to the emergence of a knowledge-based economy [START_REF] Foray | The economics of knowledge[END_REF]). The key factors for the success of companies and national economies are more than ever dependent on their capacities to produce and use knowledge. Since the main source of this knowledge is tacit -as the concept of "tacit knowledge" carries many meanings [START_REF] Gourlay | Towards conceptual clarity for 'tacit knowledge': a review of empirical studies[END_REF], we later explain how we define it-, the problem of codification becomes vital in economic terms. In effect, codification makes it possible to detach knowledge from the person who possesses it (Myers, in Gourlay 2006). It involves a fixed cost -that of expressing the knowledge in a language and its recording on a support-but then seems to increase the efficiency of a whole series of knowledge management operations: memorization, distribution, learning. Once a formula has been written, which may represent a significant fixed cost, it may then be communicated at a negligible marginal cost. In the management field, Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) have identified a key stage in the spiral of organisational knowledge creation, the spearhead of Japanese company performance: the stage known as externalization. It consists of the passage from tacit knowing to explicit knowledge. The codification of tacit knowing has become a challenge for both economists and managers. At the same time, it is a complex operation, due to the very nature of tacit knowing, which it still seems impossible to reduce to a codification operation. In addition, the codification process can never supply all the knowledge necessary to undertake an action.

In pragmatic terms, companies that have undertaken knowledge management have found this problem a stumbling block at some point in the process. Two ways of envisaging knowledge management, two kinds of knowledge management strategies have been identified [START_REF] Hansen | What's your strategy for managing knowledge?[END_REF]): a codification strategy where knowledge is codified and stored in databases, and a personalization strategy where personal interaction is essential. These two forms of knowledge management reflect different visions of the organisation -on the one hand, the paradigm of Herbert Simon's information processing system, and on the other, the community of practice of Lave & Wenger. The first is based on a conception of knowledge management in information system terms, a cognitivist vision: we can take the image of a physical platform for storage of information; the second treats knowledge management in terms of the management of human resources, a communitarist vision: we can take the image of the social network. The codification operation is as essential to the first strategy as it is negligible or even non-existent in the second. Rather than completely contrasting these two forms of management, many authors try to combine them. We may well ask whether we are not actually in the presence of two socio-technical configurations [START_REF] Latour | Re-assembling the social. An introduction to actor-network theory[END_REF], that we must describe effectively: what is a data warehouse without the people who use it? What is a social network that operates without any physical support ? The operation of codification takes different forms, depending on the socio-technical pairing modes applied. Lastly, we can envisage within a community of practice that mentoring between an expert and a novice is based, at a given moment in time, on the expert's expression of his/her practice, taking the form of a written discourse which the novice will use as a support within the framework of his/her learning.

As the codification of practices seems to become a knowledge management tool, we have developed a method in order to study and formalize knowing-in-action.

Methodological presuppositions

In order to outline how we try to study and formalize practical knowledge, it is necessary to specify several postulates underlying the method. First, we claim that practice is embedded in its context. Referring particularly to the ethnomethodological theses of [START_REF] Garfinkel | Studies in ethnomethodology[END_REF] and of [START_REF] Fornel | La logique des situations[END_REF], to the notions of situated action [START_REF] Suchman | Plans and situated actions. The problem of human-machine communication[END_REF], and of distributed cognition [START_REF] Hutchins | Cognition in the wild[END_REF], we assert that action is not dissociable from situation, nor from cognition: it is impossible to understand the practice outside of its local setting. As suggested by [START_REF] Suchman | Plans and situated actions. The problem of human-machine communication[END_REF] and [START_REF] Orr | Talking about machines: an ethnography of a modern job[END_REF], we must study effective and singular actions, their courses in a particular physical and human framework, and what underlies each one.

Generic principles, if needed, are established, a posteriori, by the researcher from work previously carried out on different actions which have been undertaken and understood as such Consequently, the studies are not directly aiming for generalities or rules that actors produce to account for their usual activity. Yet, 'as several anthropologists, including [START_REF] Suchman | Plans and situated actions. The problem of human-machine communication[END_REF] and Bourdieu (1972) point out, "informants" often describe their jobs in canonical terms though they carry them out in non-canonical knowledge' (Brown & Duguid 1991, p 42). In the tradition of ethnological research, activity is thus apprehended in a usual situation, in the way it was done, and in its singularity -and not only through the actor's discourse. The fact of not experiencing the practice directly hinders the study [START_REF] Orlikowski | Knowing in practice: enacting a collective capacity in distributed organizing[END_REF]. The practice is thus studied in its ordinary context [START_REF] Garfinkel | Studies in ethnomethodology[END_REF]. We are not concerned here with denying that the researcher participates in the situation which he/she studies -it is for this reason that we do not use the term natural. Rather, we point out that the researcher is interested in an actual activity, not in an experimental framework, and in the usual life context of the actors concerned, which is set apart from the presence of the researcher. We therefore describe an ordinary as opposed to an extra-ordinary context which strays from what the actors are confronted with in a routine situation.

The second postulate breaks with the ethnomethodological theses discussed above and those of Bourdieu (1972). For us, understanding a practice cannot be limited to the observation of behaviour, but presupposes the understanding of significant underlying facets.

From a phenomenological perspective, Vermersch (2004, p.36) provides a quote that enlightens our understanding of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behaviour (1942): action seems to be 'a double-sided object, one public and behaviourally observable, the other private and non-observable'. Exterior observation is neither sufficient to account for, nor to explain the actor's activity. It is important to consider his/her particular way of living, of perceiving, of making sense of his/her situation… to consider his/her own world.

Approaching the subjective side of the practice enables us to study such practice. The difficulty lies in the fact that the subjective side of practice stems from an embodied meaning, from 'significant real-life sets' (Merleau-Ponty 1942, p.179), from knowing-in-action [START_REF] Piaget | Réussir et comprendre PUF[END_REF], and from cognition embedded in practice [START_REF] Yanow | Acquiring expertise in professional practice: reflecting on the role of reflection-in-action[END_REF]. Practice 'conveys an ante-predicative prelinguistic meaning' (Dauliach 1998, p.309), similar to 'pre-reflected awareness' (Vermersch 2003, p.71) or in Polanyi's words, a kind of subsidiary awareness.

According to Taylor, Yanow & Tsoukas (2007, p.10) point out that '[M]uch of our intelligent action in the world is carried on unformulated. It flows from an understanding which is largely inarticulate'. In spite of its unarticulated nature, it is important to address these constituents.

The third postulate concerns the actor: he/she is considered to be a reflective practitioner [START_REF] Schön | The reflective practitioner. Basic books[END_REF]. He/she is endowed with the possibility of recognising his/her own activity from a new perspective. The phenomenological premises underlining 'the power the subject has to set sights on himself/herself' (Merleau-Ponty 1988, p.408) establish the possibilities the actor has to explicate his/her experience [START_REF] Dauliach | Expression et onto-anthropologie chez Merleau-Ponty[END_REF][START_REF] Vermersch | L'entretien d'explicitation[END_REF][START_REF] Vermersch | Prendre en compte la phénoménalité : propositions pour une psycho phénoménologie[END_REF]. In other words, 'humans have the capacity to reflect on what they do and to articulate those reflections' (Yanow & Tsoukas 2007, p.15). However, the actor is not spontaneously able to update it: to become aware of his/her own subjective experience, 'its descriptive thematisation, and even prior to all that, its deliberate reflection are not spontaneous, nor immediate, nor direct, nor easy!' (Vermersch 1999b, p.13). It is difficult 'to relate to something which has not yet become the object of conscious awareness' (Vermersch 1999a, p.34). Many authors who are interested in organisational knowledge, highlight this difficulty (c.f., [START_REF] Nonaka | The knowledge-creating company[END_REF][START_REF] Tsoukas | Do we really understand tacit knowledge? In The Blackwell handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management[END_REF]. 'The knowledge people use in organizations is so practical and deeply familiar to them that when people are asked to describe how they do what they do, they often find it hard to express it in words' (Tsoukas 2003, p.413). 'If the subject wants to be able to produce a description he first has to presentify the lived experience which serves as the point of reference and to suspend his usual way of doing things in order that what previously only existed 'in act' now appears as object' (Vermersch, 1999a, p.36). If any actor is capable of reflection, it is not a position that is spontaneously adopted towards his/her own action. It should occur as soon as a surprise appears [START_REF] Schön | The reflective practitioner. Basic books[END_REF], when there is a disturbance, an interruption [START_REF] Patriotta | On studying organizational knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Yanow | Acquiring expertise in professional practice: reflecting on the role of reflection-in-action[END_REF]), but it can also, as we will see, be encouraged by a method [START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action, analyse sémiologique : essais d'une anthropologie cognitive située[END_REF][START_REF] Vermersch | L'entretien d'explicitation[END_REF]. Usual verbalisations concerning the action stem more often from a discourse of rationalisation, or of justification than an explication. Indeed, as Lahire (2002, p.391), following Bourdieu (1972), emphasizes, during social interaction or sociological interviews, the actors are led to 'to talk about themselves and to select in their past the traits they judge to be salient'. Consequently, the discourse produced does not correspond to an explication, but is similar to a 'verbal construction of oneself by oneself [which] is the product of narrative work based on the observation of oneself by oneself and by others' (Lahire 2002, p.392). Informants tend to use abstract knowledge in order to describe their actions [START_REF] Lave | Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life[END_REF]. Accordingly, the method developed must constitute an aid to return to, to reflect on, the intended action and to verbalize such action. The method must enable 'the actor to accompany the researcher in what, during the practice, makes sense for former' (Rix et al. 2005, p.275). It must also incite the practitioners 'to re-view the situation they are in, to relate their circumstances in a different way' (Tsoukas 2003, p.424). This is done in order to inform the researcher what matters. To the extent that 'focusing on a subsidiary constituent of skilful action… changes the character of the activity one is involved with' (i.e., p.417) and disturbs it, this method takes place a posteriori.

The actor's return on his/her own activity consummates the passage from an act to a linguistic activity about this act. As [START_REF] Tsoukas | Do we really understand tacit knowledge? In The Blackwell handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management[END_REF] argues, an epistemological break has taken place: knowing-in-action and discursive knowledge concerning it are not of the same nature. On one hand, as we have noted, knowing-in-action is only manifested in, by, and during action [START_REF] Quéré | La cognition comme action incarnée[END_REF]. Hence, their content can be deemed implicit insofar as it is not yet articulated. On the other hand, 'the activity exists independently of the exchange', of its reflection (Clot 1999, p.152); the discourse concerning it arises from another coupling between the actor and his/her environment [START_REF] Hr | L'arbre de la connaissance[END_REF][START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action, analyse sémiologique : essais d'une anthropologie cognitive située[END_REF][START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action: méthode développée[END_REF].

This new action has its own objective, describing the first one, and its own organisation which necessarily introduces a succession, a logical link, between events that, at the time they take place, can be more or less identified as distinct phenomena, more or less concomitant, etc.

Faced with the irreducibility of practice to a discourse, the researcher is confronted with a dilemma. Either he/she resigns him/herself to no longer taking action as a research object insofar as all scientific advancement proceeds from a discourse and insofar as practice does not need discourse about it in order to be efficient; or, while accepting the action's irreducibility and the impossibility for verbalisations to cover it, he/she tries to understand it by interesting him/herself in the relation that the verbalisations of the actor have to his/her actions. This second position is the one we adopt by working, as does Vermersch (1999a, p.35), on 'the controlled employment of reflecting activity'.

Finally, in order to avoid reducing a theory of action to a theory of a discourse of action [START_REF] Ricoeur | Soi-même comme un autre[END_REF]), the necessity arises to use different sources of documentation of practices. The last postulate therefore concerns the interest of a triangulation: 'to understand and analyse the course of the action, […] the verbalisations will come to complement the information brought by what is observable and the traces of fulfilled action" (Vermersch 2003, p.19). If our phenomenological orientation leads us to outline the insufficiency of observation to understand practice [START_REF] Céfaï | De la méthode phénoménologique dans la démarche ethnométhodologique[END_REF], it seems important to criss-cross different kinds of data in order to approach embodied and tacit dimensions of practices.

Presentation of the system

To understand practices in their ordinary contexts, the method is founded on participant observation. This position directly follows Malinowski's (1944) ethnological methods.

However, it is important to draw attention to the way that participant observation is implemented, and especially to consider the place and role of the researcher. The researcher does not intend to intervene in the actor's practices and devotes himself/herself to their investigation. If his/her participation in the activity only amounts to observing and following it in order to apprehend what is happening, it is not with the intention of covering, in a neutral and exhaustive manner, a "given reality". Furthermore, as [START_REF] Favret-Saada | Les mots, la mort, les sorts[END_REF] demonstrated, even the observer who wants to be an outsider, participates in the situation he/she is studying both through the way he/she regards it and the consideration the others have for him or her.

During observation, the researcher stands in the background. On the one hand, this position allows him/her time to observe, to take notes in situ, as well as to implement different investigative systems. On the other hand, it prevents him/her from having to take sides with members of the group; in this way, he/she conserves the possibility of sharing a posteriori, during an interview, each actor's own experience without that actor feeling compared to or judged in relation to others. Indeed, insofar as the actors are invited, in turn, by the researcher to make their own situated experience explicit, the participant observation must also engender the possibility of this kind of exchange. Once the researcher has made sure that each member of the group participates voluntarily, and accepts both the research and his/her presence, participant observation enables him/her to build a trusting relationship with each actor. This trust-building is progressive. On one hand, the researcher must not jeopardise the project. On the other, the build-up of this trusting relationship depends on the perception that the subjects have of the researcher as well as of his/her intentions. Thus, it seems important to show to each person that the objective is in no way to judge or evaluate, but to learn and understand his/her practice.

During this participant observation, the researcher constitutes different types of observation data. Even if, as we have noted, this outside observation is not sufficient, it is essential to have, at the end, different kinds of data to document embodied and tacit dimensions of practices. Two kinds of video are recorded at the same time:

-one corresponds to an outside point of view of the subjects' activity filmed from a broad perspective using a digital video camera (the objective camera); and -the other is made using a video camera with a lens (ø 8mm) fixed on the glasses of the actor or on an ear piece (the subjective camera), and with a microphone (ø 6mm) attached to his/her clothes. This video camera and microphone are linked to a mini DV recorder (73/37/112mm for 340g) that is placed in a coat pocket or on a belt. This set-up enables the recording of the situated subjective perspective of the actor during his/her practice. We do not assimilate this perspective, as do some authors [START_REF] Lahlou | Observing cognitive work in offices[END_REF][START_REF] Lahlou | L'activité du point de vue de l'acteur et la question de l'intersubjectivité[END_REF], to the actor's perception, to his/her 'phenomenal visual and auditory flux' (Lahlou 2006, p.213). It represents a trace of the activity that is close to the actor's visual field in situ.

As we have indicated, to understand practices and what is underlying them, it is important to approach the implicit, personal, and significant side of the action, beyond these traces of the activity. To that end, and regarding the need to control the reflecting process, we designed a system that incites and helps the actor to explicate his/her practices. In this way, several systems have been developed: the explication interview [START_REF] Vermersch | L'entretien d'explicitation[END_REF]; auto confrontation in Von Cranach & Kalbermatten's work (1982); auto confrontation as part of the course-of-action theory [START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action, analyse sémiologique : essais d'une anthropologie cognitive située[END_REF][START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action: méthode développée[END_REF]; or in a Vygotskyian perspective, a crisscross auto confrontation [START_REF] Clot | La fonction psychologique du travail[END_REF], and so on. As far as we are concerned, we use the recording of the situated subjective perspective during a subjective re situ interview. This interview takes place as soon as possible after the practice. It mobilises the situated subjective perspective by starting at the beginning of the recording; it begins by requesting the actor to talk, in as much detail as possible, about what he/she experienced during the event that the video is showing. Throughout the interview, watching the video enables the actor to be focused, accompanied, and brought as close as possible to the dynamics of his/her actions.

It, thus, helps him/her to make his/her experience explicit. Using this video recording as a way to support the interview presents the advantage of focusing the dialogue on the singular and effective course of a specified practice. It defines a particular occurrence of the activity studied by materialising it. In order to explicate of the action, this perspective seems to facilitate the actor's effort of reflection as much as the conducting of the interview by the researcher. Indeed, the trace interposed between the actor and his/her action, the trace that objectifies it, seems close to the way in which he/she actually could have perceived the situation in which he/she acted. Thus, the subjective re situ interview proceeds from 'a double steering of the actor's reflection, by the recorded trace and the dialectical orientation of words' (Rix & Biache 2004, p.392). This interview therefore favours a sharing of the experience that allows the researcher to understand what makes sense for the actor at the moment he/she acts, to approach the subjective side of his/her practice: he/she, 'by drawing our attention to certain things, makes us "see connections"' (Tsoukas 2003, p.424).

Three different kinds of data emanate from this system: videos of an actor's situated subjective perspectives during his/her practice, videos of his/her behaviour, and subjective re situ interviews. The first two, once the interview is completed, represent signs of the practice in its effective completion; the third one, once transcribed, gives meaning to the practice thanks to the actor's explications. By taking the actor's phenomenal experience into account, we thus attempt to formalise part of practical knowledge.

An investigation of adaptive practices of an expert polar explorer

In this third section, we present the way in which this method was set up within a research program whose purpose is to study 'in vivo', or close-up, an expert's practices in extreme, that is evolving, uncertain, and risky, situations in order to derive theoretical propositions [START_REF] Pettigrew | Longitudinal field research on change: theory and practice[END_REF]). Close to Lazarus's research (1999), we work on the adaptation practices that actors use to cope with situations. The choice of polar expeditions as a research context is a result of precise theoretical and methodological concerns that have been addressed in other papers and will not be developed here (cf. Lièvre 2004aLièvre , 2004b;;[START_REF] Lièvre | Vers la construction d'un observatoire de l'effectivité organisationnelle, une illustration à partir d'une investigation d'une expédition polaire[END_REF].

We should only point out that the nature of this extreme context, paradoxically, greatly facilitates the researcher's work. The choice of this environment eliminates various problems such as the acceptance of the researcher in the field and obstacles related to secrecy and confidentiality. We are not dealing with a private company in cut throat competition, but with groups, without legal status, that bring together voluntary enthusiasts. The issue of secrecy is not viewed in the same way. Moreover, there is a tradition in polar expeditions, even those specifically focused on athletic performance, to integrate a scientific dimension. The researcher's request is therefore welcomed with pleasure by the actors who quite often solicit and demand such participation themselves. Furthermore, the continuous nature of the activity -preparing outings that last several days, expeditions in the field that can last up to two months -creates proximity of the researcher and the actors concerned that facilitates trust.

Finally, in this context, the practical logic of the actors is pushed to its limits that in turn make this logic more visible for the researcher.

As an illustration, we explain how this method was set up during the expedition 'Nunavut 2003' in order to understand the adaptive practices of an expert to cope with extreme situations. In particular, we ask about the way in which risk emerges for him as it happens.

First of all, we specify the kind of participant observation carried out during the expedition, and then discuss the data.

The researcher joins the team as an person inexperienced in ski polar exploration, as an individual who wants to learn others' practices, and as an observer who follows the group wherever it goes and participates in all collective tasks without taking responsibility or decisions. This ethnographic work begins with the idea of the project, continues through the different phases of preparation and realisation, and ends with the return home. In this way, the researcher participates in all the activities of the small expedition group.

During this trek, at different critical phases, the expedition leader, Michel, who, after more than 30 years of expeditions, is recognised by his peers as an expert in polar expeditions, was equipped with the subjective camera. The researcher, while walking, filmed his behaviour from the side using the objective camera. The subjective re situ interviews took place in France after the trek.

We present, in a table, the data about a moment of Michel's progression. In the first column, we describe the context using video recordings of Michel's behaviour and his situated subjective perspective. The idea is to expose what can be seen and/or heard at that moment while limiting the interpretative intrusions. This description is not intended to be exhaustive: it is still possible to clarify Michel's behaviour and events. It does, however, inform what actually happened, enabling anyone who does not have the videos and did not experience this moment of progression, to follow the course of the practice. In the second column, part of the subjective re situ interview about the same moment is re-transcribed; it is

Formalisation of the practice

At the end of this fjord, Michel knows there are bears: he's already seen dens at this spot. The tracks in the snow and the remains of a seal confirm this possibility. While walking on, he is on the lookout. A bear can be hidden behind a block of ice: we might see it at the last second, when he charges. You have to be ready to react. The gun is on Michel's pulka. For everyone's safety, it's better to stay in a group and behind the gun. Michel mentioned that to everyone, but the others continue to stay in front, which annoys him. While walking at his own pace, he remains attentive.

With this kind of data, we are able to work on how the risks associated with the presence of bears are actualised during the course of the expert's practice. During the moment studied, Michel perceived a threat and wanted the members of the expedition to line up behind him as a safety measure. This example allows us to reveal several particular elements that make sense for Michel in this situation and which led him to perceive the risk of a bear. In this case, he noted: bear tracks, dens seen during a previous trek, seal remains, geographic layout.

The emergence of the risk is based on a network of constituents which are only meaningful and salient as regards to knowledge, previous experience, and his own involvement. Even if before the trek, Michel planned procedures in order to cope daily with this danger during the expedition, for example, protection from the bear during the night, management of the group's progress, and so on, in the real-life situations, this risk was not permanent, it did not exist en-soi. As a result, in reality, more often than not procedures were not followed.

Firstly, as polar explorers often use other expeditions' log books in order to prepare and succeed in their project, this kind of formalisation of practice could provide an interesting tool within this community.

Secondly, in order to study how risks emerge for expedition leaders and their adaptive practices to cope with them, we formalise their practices during several moments. Then, we analyse these different formalisations in order to characterise the process during which the risk is constructed. We consider foremost:

-how past experiences contribute to risk determination processes;

-the sensitivity of the expert which determines how "things are […] encountered […] as attractive, threatening, interesting, boring, frustrating, etc" (Dreyfus, in Yanow & Tsoukas 2007, p.18), for him in one situation at one time;

-if, when and how the construction of a situation as risky becomes shared by the whole group;

-places/functions of objects, techniques, planned procedures in this process.

This kind of analysis allows us, for example, to theorise relationships between previous risks, planned procedures, the emergence of risks during the course of the expert's practice, and actions undertaken to cope with the dangers. It seems to shed new light on the conception and management of organisations confronted with extreme situations.

Conclusion

To conclude, we highlight, firstly, the importance and the use of this kind of data in knowledge management; secondly, we point out the limits of such results and directions of further researches.

The methodology discussed has proved to be an interesting tool to document practical knowledge: it enables researchers to understand a posteriori what, in a particular context of activity, makes sense for experienced actors. We conclude by highlighting three reasons why this method is of particular interest. Firstly, this method could also be used by an engineer or a manager to gain a better understanding of a particular activity, seeing that several researchers (Lalhou 1999;[START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action: méthode développée[END_REF]) have already used a similar method in order to study the activity of executives or operators in traditional organisations. Secondly, as this method results in the formalisation of practice, it offers a real opportunity to test the usefulness of this kind of description within knowledge management practices. In effect, in order to know if 'the explicit knowledge created by "tacit knowledge explication" facilitates reproduction of the behaviours attributed to tacit knowledge' (Gourlay 2006, p.65) and how this kind of description can be used within knowledge management practices, we have first to construct it. In this way, the methodology discussed is a contribution to knowledge management. Thirdly, these kinds of data allow for the theorisation of relationships between prescriptions/plans and the real activity of an expert: it opens up new perspectives on the conception and management of organisations, especially those confronted with extreme situations. Moreover, research, close to Berkeley group, on high reliability organisations underline the importance of descriptions of effective and situated practices [START_REF] Bourrier | Organiser la fiabilité[END_REF]Journé & Raulet-Crozet 2008;[START_REF] Roberts | Managing high reliability organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Weick | Organizing for High reliability: Processes of collective Mindfulness[END_REF].

We are only able to touch upon the possibilities for an organisation to use a formalisation of practice. Even if, we, like [START_REF] Tsoukas | Do we really understand tacit knowledge? In The Blackwell handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management[END_REF], believe that practical knowledge can neither be transferred, nor transmitted directly, this kind of description could constitute a tool within a community of practices. Several authors underline also the relevance of narratives in knowledge management (cf. [START_REF] Patriotta | Sensemaking on the shop floor: Narratives of knowledge in organisations[END_REF][START_REF] Patriotta | On studying organizational knowledge[END_REF]. However, in order to evaluate the importance and the use of this formalisation of practice within knowledge management, new studies are necessary. Several directions could be developed in order to research the relevance of such formalisation in organisations: during a design process [START_REF] Béguin | Taking activity into account during the design process[END_REF], during more or less formal communications between colleagues or as an artefact for actor himself. Finally, as we focus on the personal characteristics of practical knowledge, another line of further research could be the collective side of activity. Insofar as the amount of personal practical knowledge is not sufficient to operate an organisation, to understand knowledge processes and systems supposes investigation on a collective scale.

Table 1 :

 1 through this dialogue that the researcher can little by little approach what the explorer experiences, what is significant for him at that moment, what compels him, what affects him, what matters to him, etc. With these different data, we attempt to formalise Michel's practice at that particular moment of progression, while taking into consideration both his experience through his explications and what he actually did. Thus, this formalisation results from a synthesis of descriptive data and verbalisations. It is the researcher's narrative construction which presents the course of Michel's practice, especially how the situation becomes for him, as he progress, risky. It describes step by step what Michel is doing and what is making sense for him as it happens. Illustration of different kinds of data : a formalisation of a practice

	Description of the context	Explanation of the actor
	We've arrived at the end of a fjord.
	Two team members are walking ahead of Michel; they
	are 50 meters away. I'm walking on his left slightly
	behind him.	Researcher: So, you're looking for something in
	Michel looks alternately just in front of him, then at the	particular…
	right bank that we are walking along.	Michel: Here, I'm looking at the coast…
		R: For you, there is danger there?
		M: The danger is on the coast…
		R: Ok… Is it a risk, is it danger, what is it at that
		moment?
		M: There is a risk, not in… which is not
		inconsiderable… I know that at this spot there is a den,
		that there are dens because I've seen them… I know
		there's a seal that got itself killed, I know because there
		are bear tracks… So there are all the indications that
		point to…
	He stops and points to the right bank with his stick, and	R: So you're telling me that, at that moment, that's what
	as I arrive next to him, he says: 'You see, these are	really matters?
	crappy areas because you can have a bear hiding out	M: You see, I'm saying it again…
	inside there that suddenly comes out…'	R: Does that bother you there? That they [the other
	Then starting to walk and looking at his fellow team	team members] didn't listen to you? Are you saying it
	members, he continues: 'That's why I told them to not	to me again?...
	stay in front of the gun, but… They didn't listen to me.'	M: No, it doesn't bother me, but I'm saying, they're
	He continues to walk towards the end of the fjord and	wrong…
	looks frequently just in front of him, at the other team	R: Ok…
	members and the coast.	M: You see, I'm saying, that is the kind of crappy area
		for those reasons… I'm telling them not to do it, to not
		stay in front of me, they stay in front, let them go to
		hell!

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Georgiana Wierre-Gore (Blaise Pascal University, UFR STAPS, Clermont-Ferrand) and David Maker (Graduate School of Management, Groupe ESC Clermont-Ferrand) for their careful reading.


Géraldine Rix-Lièvre
email: geraldine.rix@univ-bpclermont.fr

Pascal Lièvre
email: pascallievre@orange.fr

An Innovative Observatory of Polar Expeditions Projects: An Investigation of Organizing

Keywords: methodology, project, organizing, logbook, subjective re situ interview, polar expedition

. The aim is to study the actuality of the collective action of organizing in its totality. It is guided by the description of "organizing" as defined by Weick. This case is built from information gathered by two actors engaged in the expedition, each one collecting data in a specific perspective. The first data collection was dedicated to collective dimensions. The multimedia logbook is filled in by a researcher in a posture of observant participation, relying on paper or video traces regularly collected throughout the project. These traces are then shaped to make a narrative. The second data collection was dedicated to more individual practices and therefore centered on individual members of the expedition at specific moments. The Device for Objectifying Situated Practices relies on two videos of the situation, one from an outside point of view, the other one using an embedded camera in order to record from a standpoint close to the actor's one, and on an interview with the actor using the second recording. The method allows to objectify the tacit knowledge implemented by the actor in a done situation, and to shape it in a chronological statement.

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to present a methodology for investigating polar ski expeditions: in situ, in vivo and in extenso. This observatory looks at how the actors organize themselves in an extreme environment. It is a new kind of qualitative methodology in that, classically, this type of method mostly focuses on "ways of saying" [START_REF] Hlady Rispal | La méthode des cas. Application à la recherche en gestion[END_REF], whereas we concentrate on "ways of doing" [START_REF] Lièvre | Mode d'interprétation des matériaux issus d'un observatoire de l'organisant (Analysis of data from an in vivo observatory of organizing)[END_REF]. This observatory's aim is to study the actuality of the collective action of organizing in its totality. It is guided by the description of "organizing" as defined by Weick. It endeavours to study the ways by which the organization is creating itself by attempting to confront both the problems relating to studying the activity and the taking into account of the individual and collectives dimensions of organizational dynamics.

The term "organizing" needs clarification. In 1969, Karl Weick proposed in his founding work, The Social Psychology of Organizing, a major shift in the investigation of organizations, symbolised both by the use of the term "organizing" rather than "organization," and by the desire to give organized collective action a perspective that is not just sociological (collective) but also psychological (individual), which he qualified as an approach in terms of social psychology. Organizations were to be observed as processes being developed. In Weick's own words (2003), it is necessary to understand "how organisational life unfolds" in situation in each case. How do the actors constructindividually and collectively-the meaning of their action, and according to which organizational dynamic?

To answer the difficult question of the passage from the individual to the collective and vice versa, we propose an observatory comprising two complementary investigatory tools: the multimedia logbook (MLB) with a collective viewpoint, and the situated practices objectifying system (SPOS), focused on each individual-each depending on the personal and distinct commitment of a researcher. So the system as a whole depends on the simultaneous presence of two researchers. This observatory results from reflection in progress since 2000 on methodology in the framework of a research programme investigating extreme situations management centred on polar expeditions. A polar expedition is seen as "exemplary" project management in a changing, uncertain and risky environment. Within this framework, a polar expedition is considered a project management [START_REF] Garel | Le management de projet (Project management)[END_REF] ideal for research purposes, insofar as (1) in a context of this type the phenomena are more easy to interpret, as each actor's logic is pushed to the limit, and (2) it allows participating observation as close as possible to the experienced situations.

In the first place, we shall list the obstacles to study organizing. Then we present the observatory, specifying each of the tools developed as well as the ways in which they are coordinated and complement one another. Lastly, we give an example in order to show how this observatory has been implemented in the context of a Labrador expedition, before showing how our data are treated in relation to the subject of polar bear risk management.

The Obstacles to Be Overcome to Investigate Organizing

Before presenting the methodology constructed to investigate the running of a polar ski expedition as organizing, we return to the inherent limits to understanding activity through observation and speech, respectively, which justifies the development of a special observatory. We highlight first of all the insufficiency of observation for understanding the practices. We shall then demonstrate the limits of speech on the activity as a way to understanding it.

Limits of Observation

Once the paradigmatic change in social sciences had been completed [START_REF] Dosse | L'empire du sens[END_REF], actions could no longer be thought of without considering their meaning. Behavior is considered as "an object of study with two faces-a public one of observable behaviour and another private and unobservable" (Vermersch, 2004, p. 36); consequently, "to be relevant the description of the activity and the situation must not be monopolised by the scientific observer [… but must be] effected from the point of view of the actor's internal dynamics" (Theureau, 2000, pp. 182-183). Thus, the actor is no longer a mere object of study, but has become a subject; far from being "a cultural idiot" [START_REF] Garfinkel | Studies in ethnomethodology[END_REF], he is considered as an intelligent, rational and, at times, sensitive subject with a subjectivity worthy of enquiry. So even if observing the organization in situation is indispensable, it is not sufficient for documenting practices: constructing data of another nature appears necessary.

The actors are then incited to provide words on their actions and activities from their own points of view, and on how they see what they do. They may be invited to account for their progress, their successes and failures, their qualities and difficulties, or their emotions. All their verbalizations can be used to document the activity, but do not clarify it overall. The actor develops, depending on the context and to whom he is speaking, different ways of saying his action: he explains it, justifies it, evaluates it, or describes it. His verbalizations, more or less spontaneous, differ in nature, each relating in a particular way to his action. So in order to understand the practices of polar expeditions, it is necessary to distinguish the different kinds of verbalizations the actors produce about their activity and to propose different utterance contexts that help one understand, on the one hand, the collective action's dynamics, and on the other, what, from the subject's point of view, is the basis of his action.

The Limits to Discourse for Studying the Activity in New Utterance Contexts

Indeed, as Lahire (2002, p. 391) following Bourdieu (1990) emphasized, during social interaction or sociological interviews, the actors are led "to talk about themselves and to select in their past the traits they judge to be salient." Consequently, the discourse produced is similar to a "verbal construction of oneself by oneself [which] is the product of narrative work based on the observation of oneself by oneself and by others" (Lahire, 2002, p. 392). These verbalizations, then, resemble an emplotment [START_REF] Ricoeur | Temps et récit. Tome 1 : L'intrigue et le récit historique (Time and Narrative[END_REF]: an ordering that presupposes the introduction of a logic or causality in the events' succession. They reveal the coherence the actor confers on his action after the event, what he wants another to see, or what lets him make his activity seem rational to another. In this way especially, they allow the identities of the individual constructs to be grasped [START_REF] Dubar | La socialisation : construction des identités sociales et professionnelles (Socialization: social and professional construction of identities)[END_REF], the knowledge he mobilizes to justify his practices to be brought to light, the goals he has set himself to be studied. On the other hand, they do not appear to be able to document the rationality of the action in the situation, that is, the logic that governs it as it actually takes place. This explanatory ordering does not coincide with the rationality in action. "Action is a form of knowledge in its own right … it exists, it functions, it has goals and it reaches them-without necessarily being conceptualised" (Vermersch, 1996, p. 72). The logic governing the action's running is an actualizing knowledge, an incarnate signification, a knowledge at work that only manifests itself in, through, and during the action. Accordingly, its content may be termed implicit insofar as it is still not consciously conceived; action, therefore, does not have a rationality of the same nature as discourse. On the one hand, Acting is characterized by its efficacy, its relevancepractical and effective-at a given moment: it is a performance, an implementation. On the other hand, Saying is demonstration and presentation; it is characterized by its coherence and its general significance. A real epistemological rupture exists between acting and saying. Faced with the incapacity of reducing practice to a discourse, the researcher is confronted with a dilemma: either give up treating action as an object of study insofar as scientific progress can only come from a discourse; or, while accepting action's irreducible nature and the impossibility for verbalizations to cover it, attempt to understand and/or explain by taking an interest in the relations between the actor's verbalizations and action. In the latter case, the researcher must examine the production conditions of the verbalizations documenting the acting, that is, the logic of the action, the actualizing knowledge at work, the way in which the actor constructs and lives his situation.

Based on these two facts, the observatory we propose makes a point of combining both levels: data obtained from observation and discourse enable the way the actors live and act during the expedition.

Presentation of the Observatory

As we pointed out in the introduction, the observatory's aim is to study organizing by trying to deal both with the problems relating to studying the activity we have highlighted and with considering the individual and collective dimensions of the organizational dynamics. Toward these ends, the working of the observatory depends on two researchers each having his own objective, standpoint, and investigatory tools. Both take part in the same expedition-from the idea for the project, including the period of preparation and the expedition itself, right up to the homecoming-and are embedded in the team. We present here each researcher's work and investigatory tools in turn before highlighting their complementarity.

Giving an Account of a Reality Shared by the Collective: The Multimedia Logbook

The stance of the first researcher-an experienced participant in polar ski expeditions-is that of an actor: just like any other expedition member he has his responsibilities-the tent, the stove, anti-bear safety, making progress, and so forth-he acts, intervenes, in part leads the expedition. In anthropological terms this way of investigating practices in situation might be qualified as "observing participation" as meant by Junker [START_REF] Peretz | Les méthodes en sociologie. L'observation[END_REF], who emphasized that a researcher's observation is subject to his activities as a participant. In fact, this does not suppose, as this author implies, that the observation takes place without the other team members knowing about it: the actors are informed of the study's methods and purposes, take part willingly, and receive the final reports. [START_REF] David | Logique, épistémologie, méthodologie en sciences de gestion : trois hypothèses revisitées (Logic, epistemology, methodology in management science: three hypotheses revisited)[END_REF] speak of direct participation to categorize this type of participating observation. This still means the actors expect the same commitment from the researcher as they do from one another-both physically and morally. This level of commitment-with a touch of material construction into the bargain-can only be given by a researcher, especially during an unassisted polar ski expedition and so in a dangerous environment, if the researcher has a certain expertise. On the other hand, the notion of observing participation insists on a second consequence of a high level of commitment to the activity-the need to intervene. The researcher cannot aim for an illusory neutrality-the passive observation of a so-called "natural" situation [START_REF] Berry | Logique de connaissance et logique d'action (Logic of knowledge and logic of action)[END_REF][START_REF] Plane | Méthode de recherche-intervention en management (Method of research-intervention in management science)[END_REF]. In this way, the researcher not only takes part in all of the group's activities and choices, but also gives the group the benefit of experience with tools to develop, monitor, and adapt the project, and intervenes at any moment to help it progress well. This observing participation enables the researcher to develop a certain insider view in relation both to the group and its activities. Seeing from the inside is indispensable for approaching the collective processes for decision making, strategic reflection, and project management.

Armed with an inside approach to the workings of a collectivity engaged in achieving a project, and standing in an actor's shoes, the researcher must develop investigatory tools that enable building a record of the group's activity, despite being fully involved. Throughout the expedition-from its initial idea, through the constitution of the team, the search for sponsors, the choice of equipment, the moments of preparation, the actual expedition, until the return to France, and at any moment-the researcher must be able to establish and/or preserve various items recording what happens inside the collectivity. To achieve this continuous record, a multimedia logbook (MLB) was developed, which makes use of several media and takes different forms depending on the project's phases. During the team constitution phase, the MLB includes the e-mail messages between the various parties; it brings together the notes taken by the researcher during the meetings and their sound recordings; it also makes use of video, since during ski trekking the researcher must keep a record of the expedition's daily progress-especially of how the group organizes itself-as well as particular events. Combining various types of materials, it ultimately corresponds to the researcher's point of view as the project progresses.

From this logbook and a work of reflection on his or her own practices-a real first-person approach [START_REF] Vermersch | Pour une psychologie phénoménologique (Towards a phenomenological psychology)[END_REF]-the researcher, in the form of a film and/or in writing, can produce an account of the expedition's running. In order to construct from the logbook-and thus from the data resulting from experience as an actor inside the groupa scientific body of knowledge from a constructivist point of view, the researcher must, post factum, develop a reflection so as to explain this experience and thereby the way the observations were worked up [START_REF] Le Moigne | Les épistémologies constructivistes (The constructivist epistemologies)[END_REF]. This reflection can be related to the indispensable reflexivity of the researcher that various authors have emphasized in anthropology or more broadly in social sciences. The resulting explicitness not only allows the researcher to give an account of methods of investigation, but also enables taking a distance from his or her own experience. In this way he or she acquires the ability to produce an account detached from subjectivity as an actor to be accepted by all the members of the team. This account thus corresponds to making diverse elements and events cohere into a story that gathers the various phases of the expedition by joining them logically together [START_REF] Ricoeur | Temps et récit. Tome 1 : L'intrigue et le récit historique (Time and Narrative[END_REF]. This account relating a reality shared on the expedition constitutes, on the one hand, the corpus on the basis of which the researcher can question the modes of organization from a logistic angle or from the project management point of view, focus on a particular operation such as the recruiting methods, or follow the role of the leader throughout the project. On the other hand, it constitutes a source of information for any practitioner: by acceding to the actual real life working of a collective's organization, practitioners can draw lessons for their own projects.

Entering Each Actor's World of Practices: The Situated Practices Objectifying System

If the first researcher's investigations are oriented toward the collective side of the organization, the second's aim is to understand the individual and spontaneous practices of each member of the team in situation. The job is, at particular moments, pitching a tent, progressing for an hour, or attending a preparatory meeting in order to understand what an actor is doing both objectively and subjectively.

Accordingly, the second researcher is embedded in the team, not as a teammate like the first, but as a novice in polar ski expedition who wants to learn what each team member does, as an observer who follows the group in its path and contributes to all the collective tasks without taking any responsibility or decision. Compared with the first researcher's observing participation, the second's stance should be described rather as participating observation. The role is not to intervene in the actors' practices but above all to investigate them [START_REF] Peretz | Les méthodes en sociologie. L'observation[END_REF]. If participation in the activity of the group amounts to no more than following it to understand what is happening, it is not merely in order to recover, exhaustively and with neutrality, a "given reality." Besides, as [START_REF] Favret-Saada | Les mots, la mort, les sorts (The words, death and spells)[END_REF] pointed out, even the would-be external observer takes part in the situation studied, both through the way the observer looks at it and through the way the others look at the observer. So the inversion of the terms means that in situation, this researcher stands back more from the group. On the one hand, this stance leaves him more time for his observations, for taking notes in situ, as well as setting up various investigation systems. On the other, it spares him from having to take position in relation to the members of the group; in this way he can still share the intimacy of their own experience with each of the actors after the event without their feeling judged or compared.

During his participating observation, the researcher is able-thanks to a relative distance to the group-to build up various observation data on the practices of each member of the team. However, to understand these practices, the action's implicit, personal, and significative aspect, going beyond what is observable, needs to be approached, that is, the way in which each actor lives his or her situation and acts at a particular moment. Insofar as, for each individual, his or her way of being, living, acting in a particular context is above all in action and remains broadly pre-reflected, it becomes necessary to set up a system that encourages and helps the actor to make his or her practice explicit. With this end in view, we have developed a new methodology: the subjective re situ interview. Largely inspired from selfconfrontation [START_REF] Theureau | Le cours d'action, analyse sémiologique : essais d'une anthropologie cognitive située[END_REF] and the explication interview [START_REF] Vermersch | L'entretien d'explicitation (Interview of explicitation)[END_REF], this system focuses on the running of the action by at the same time mobilizing observation and data relating to the actor's subjectivity. It has three more precise objectives: the first is to focus this explication effort of the actor's on a moment the researcher chooses; the second is to relate the explication verbalizations to an act already documented and actually having taken place, thereby checking the relation of the discourse to the act and documenting the act from different types of materials; the third is to stay as close as possible to the actor's way of being in the situation. Concretely, the system set up for each moment investigated consists, in the situation, in filming (1) an actor's behavior in its context, and (2), thanks to an on-board camera, a point of view close to the actor's in action, a situated subjective perspective. After the event-that is, after a meeting, at the end of a technical weekend, returning from a preparation trek-in turn, the actors are asked during subjective re situ interviews. Each interview, carried by the researcher, consists of putting an actor back in a particular moment by using the recording of his situated subjective perspective, so as to induce him to make explicit his way of being at that moment. In this way the subjective re situ interview represents for the researcher a tool that enables approaching what he or she experienced during the event that the video is showing. Standing off from the group and its in situation activities, the researcher enters, after the event and in turn, the world of the practices of each actor.

Finally, to document each investigated moment, we can use, at the same time, the actor's verbalizations, which show, subjectively, how he or she lives the situation, and two recordings made in situ of his or her behavior and situated subjective perspective. These different types of materials, fairly subjective and fairly objective, are harnessed together to reconstruct the process of the action. Thus, we are able account for and understand the singular, spontaneous, and situated practices of the different members of the team.

What Complementarity for Understanding the Organizing?

Having set out the stance of each of the researchers, we shall discuss the interest of this dual investigation of a polar ski expedition seen as an organizing. In a positivist epistemology, placing two researchers on the same framework to study the same actors has no sense, except to corroborate the reliability of the observation of a given reality. From a constructivist point of view [START_REF] Le Moigne | Les épistémologies constructivistes (The constructivist epistemologies)[END_REF], this possibility represents the opportunity to develop two different perspectives differing in several dimensions within a single research program: (a) Novice-Expert, (b) Actor-Follower, (c) Individual-Collective.

The account of the first researcher highlights, in a reconstruction of the running of the expedition accepted by all, how the collective works. In parallel, the materials constructed by the second researcher enable us to grasp the practices of each of the actors and what motivates them in situation. Thus, the observatory we propose places the researcher's relations to his or her terrain-or more precisely to the actors' terrain-at the heart of the construction of the data. The fact that every researcher participates in the situation being studied no longer then appears as a bias, but as the basis for being able to construct different data [START_REF] Berry | Logique de connaissance et logique d'action (Logic of knowledge and logic of action)[END_REF][START_REF] Favret-Saada | Les mots, la mort, les sorts (The words, death and spells)[END_REF][START_REF] Girin | L'analyse empirique des situations de gestion (Empirical analysis of management situations: elements of theory and method)[END_REF][START_REF] Plane | Méthode de recherche-intervention en management (Method of research-intervention in management science)[END_REF]. The postulate is the following: the stance of each researcher in the field allows the researcher to document, in his or her particular interaction with the actors, different facets of the organizing. Thus, both these systems, far from attempting to grasp a reality exhaustively, seem complementary and necessary for understanding a polar ski expedition as an organizing. Considering that the activity of the collective is more than the sum of its individual practices, understanding how a group organizes itself is impossible if these practices only are studied. Inversely, approaching the genesis of a collective activity-that is, what emerges from its interactionsseems impossible without taking a look at each actor's acts and their cognitive, affective, bodily motivations. Only by making the one echo the other can an organizing be understood-in this case, as we shall show in the following part, managing bear risk within a polar ski expedition.

The Organization Face-to-Face with the Management of a Risk

In order to show how the various data constructed within the observatory enable the organizational dynamic to be understood, we present the products of an investigation centred on managing the risks connected to the presence of polar bears during a Labrador expedition. We shall present the yield from each system successively-the MLB and the SPOS-before showing how they are combined together so as to, it seems to us, understand the organizing in relation to the danger represented by the polar bears, an important factor in the success of a polar expedition.

MLB Data Giving Information about Polar Bear Risk Management

We cannot report on the expedition logbook proper here, for obvious reasons of space-it comprises some 20 pages-and relevance to the issue with which we are concerned. We shall only use a few extracts from the MLB that document the question, particularly, the account of the various exchanges about "bear" safety and a narrative of an event during the expedition.

The Account of the Various Exchanges about "Bear" Safety

During the preparation phase, a meeting was organized with the different team members. Michel, the expedition leader, chaired the meeting; the second point on the agenda, which the MLB records, is what concerns us here.

The second problem to be discussed during this meeting was the protection against polar bears. Opinions were divided. Everyone related his various experiences with polar bears and the various techniques used. In any case, you bring a rifle; it is compulsory on this kind of expedition. The next issue was whether to have two rifles-one per tent. "No, it's too dangerous," Michel declares. "There must be only one rifle and I must have it." And for safety during the night-what do we do? Many possibilities exist: a night watch, alarm system round the camp … Michel settles the problem by proposing to take dogs: a technique used during a previous expedition, although he himself had not been in charge of them at that time. The others have never used dogs and are sceptical. Dogs can also attract bears. Michel makes the point he and Gilles will look after the dogs during the expedition. The matter was settled. The decision was made to buy two dogs on the spot.

The choice finally made by Michel, the expedition leader, relies on two tools: the presence of dogs throughout the expedition to deter the bears or, in the last resort, to warn that they are coming, and a rifle to be used as a weapon should the animal attack. Michel and one of the team members will take care of the problem of anti-bear protection. He will have the weapon and manage the dogs with his teammate.

A Narrative of an Event During the Expedition: The Loss of the Dogs

In his MLB, the researcher recorded a video commentary in which he recounted the event of the day: the loss of the dogs. From this recorded commentary and written notes relating to this period, the researcher constructed the narrative of the expedition, from which we reproduce an extract here: But in the early afternoon the wind blows still stronger and Michel does not manage to warm up his finger. The team gets worried. Pierre decides to pitch camp immediately so Michel can get warm. The next day Michel sets off as though it is nothing. He goes out in front with a dog without saying a word. The others follow him and then catch up with him. They arrive at a tricky passage on a frozen river requiring crampons to be put on. The dogs are frightened-they are sliding. Michel and Gilles, supposedly in charge of the dogs, are in front. In fact, Pierre and his friend retrieve the dogs. Slow progress is made. They reach a break in the ice slope: a ditch of 2 to 3 meters. Pierre starts out slowly with a dog and slips. In order not to injure the dog he unleashes it and sends it in the direction of Michel waiting below. Instead of rushing to catch it Michel declares: "There's no need to bother about the dog! It won't go far." Seeing the first dog running away, the second struggles and manages to get away. The dogs have gone. They are not going to come back. Tension between teammates after this dog incident. The team worries about not having security against bears any more. Michel minimizes the problem and does not seem to be bothered. Pierre has brought safety equipment from other expeditions with him: rocket flares, wire, and rubber bands. He puts together an anti-bear enclosure to protect the camp from unwanted polar bears during the night. In the morning, Michel starts the day without giving any instructions.

Michel had not seemed to pay much attention to looking after the dogs and had made many errors of judgment leading to their definitive loss. Faced with these various omissions the other team members reacted intensely and tried to cobble together a warning system with rockets to surround the camp every evening. Michel seemed unconcerned by the problem.

The Formalization of a Practice

Data produced by the SPOS enable us to account for how the bear risk was experienced by Michel at various moments. At various critical phases during the trek, Michel was equipped with the remote lens camera and the researcher, walking all the while, filmed what he was doing from the side with a wide angle. The subjective re situ interviews were carried out in France after the trek.

We present in Table 1 the data about a moment of Michel's progression. In the first column, we describe the context using video recordings of Michel's behavior and his situated subjective perspective. The idea is to expose what can be seen and/or heard at that moment while limiting the interpretative intrusions. This description is not intended to be exhaustive: it is still possible to clarify Michel's behavior and events. It does, however, inform what actually happened, enabling anyone who does not have the videos and did not experience this moment of progression to follow the course of the practice. In the second column, part of the subjective re situ interview about the same moment is re-transcribed; it is through this dialogue that the researcher can little by little approach what the explorer experiences, what is significant for him at that moment, what compels him, what affects him, what matters to him, and so forth. With these different data, we attempt to formalize Michel's practice at that particular moment of progression, while taking into consideration both his experience through his explications and what he actually did. Thus, this formalization results from a synthesis of descriptive data and verbalizations. It is the researcher's narrative construction that presents the course of Michel's practice, especially how the situation becomes risky for him as he progresses. It describes step by step what Michel is doing and what is making sense for him as it happens. In this way we formalize Michel's practice at various moments. These formalizations make it possible to highlight how bear risk becomes actual for Michel in situation: the risk presented by bears during the expedition only exists when it is manifested by visible traces of a bear's presence; it is only in this precise context that he implements a safety system associated with the rifle he has.

Ways of Managing Polar Bear Risk

The combination of two types of reports makes it possible to give an account of the actual operating of the expedition's organizational life as related to bear safety. Two examples follow:

The formalizations of Michel's practice show bear risk is only actual for him when connected to identified places or specific traces and that, in these cases, the only real protection is the rifle of which the probable use imposes a certain order of walking. It then becomes understandable why Michel is so unconcerned about managing the dogs in situation, why for him their loss constitutes no danger, and why he makes no effort to make and install another security system. It is not carelessness; it makes no sense insofar as the danger has no meaning for him in such cases.

Although during the preparation phases, Michel's words and choices concerning protection against the bears implicate the organization, the very way he handles the risks in situation is quite different from this planning. This difference throws new light on the tensions observed within the collective and on how the organization adapts concerning this issue.

These two examples make it possible to illustrate to what extent dovetailing, on the one hand, data relating to collective functioning, and on the other, individuals' logic of action, is of interest for understanding an organizing.

Conclusion

Looking at the organizing with a Weickian-that is, deliberately "interactionist"-perspective, the combination of the logic of each individual in the situation with, in return, that of the collective on each individual is what enables the organizational dynamic to be accounted for. From a theoretical point of view we envisage that the possibility of accounting for the organizing in its total actuality is located at a "meta" level in relation both to the collective logic of action as documented by the MLB and to each individual's logic of action as shown by the formalizations. This theoretical orientation generates a specific comprehension of the organizing. The comprehension of the expedition's polar bear risk management produced by combining the results of the different systems (MLB and SPOS) is unlike that that might be produced by either separately. Going by the account produced by the MLB, we might conclude that the expedition leader was negligent in managing the dogs and the bear risk. Whereas the formalizations produced by the SPOS show that the safety systems only made sense for him when the bear's presence was evident.

As for the issue of the cumbersome nature of such an observatory, it should be seen against the specificity of the qualitative method used centred not on "ways of saying" but on "ways of doing." The observatory enables the collective activity to be studied in its organizational dynamic from various types of data-both observations of activity in situation and the actors' more or less formal verbalizations. In this way it aims not to reduce the study of the activity to a study of discourse about the activity, while taking into account how the actors live their situations and describe them. The advantages and limits of this observatory should be seen in relation to what it reveals: the ways in which the organization is making itself.

To conclude, we must discuss the issue of how to use this type of method in more classic managerial situations. The tool developed here for use in a polar expedition context can obviously be used to cover more usual collective management practices, in more classic organizations-we could even say a fortiori-given the technical problems of the cold, the snow, and so forth. But at the same time, accepting such an intrusion into everyday working life presupposes considerable preparatory work, and a relation of trust between the researchers and the actors of the organization, which is far from a matter of course and has to be built up over time. Though the system does partially transform the situation, it must in no case disturb it: the activity must retain the upper hand. At the outset, the different uses of the materials gathered in the organization should also be made clear to the various actors of the organization. Returning data produced by an observatory of this type gives a substantial increase to transparency in various management situations-potentially a major unbalancing factor in terms of power and strategy. At the same time, are not the industrial relations prevailing in this type of operation those needed nowadays in an innovative, learning, and creative enterprise working within a knowledge-based economy [START_REF] Foray | The Economics of knowledge[END_REF]?

Table 1: Formalization of Michel's practice in relation to the polar bear risk at a given moment

Description of the context

Explication of the actor We have arrived at the end of a fjord. Two team members are walking ahead of Michel; they are 50 meters away. I am walking on his left slightly behind him. Michel looks alternately just in front of him, then at the right bank that we are walking along.

He stops and points to the right bank with his stick, and as I arrive next to him, he says: "You see, these are crappy areas because you can have a bear hiding out inside there that suddenly comes out…" Then starting to walk and looking at his fellow team members, he continues: "That's why I told them to not stay in front of the gun, but … They didn't listen to me." He continues to walk towards the end of the fjord and looks frequently just in front of him, at the other team members and the coast.

Researcher: So, you're looking for something in particular … Michel: Here, I'm looking at the coast … R: For you, there is danger there? M: The danger is on the coast … R: OK … Is it a risk, is it danger, what is it at that moment? M: There is a risk, not in … which is not inconsiderable … I know that at this spot there is a den, that there are dens because I've seen them … I know there's a seal that got itself killed, I know because there are bear tracks … So there are all the indications that point to … R: So you're telling me that, at that moment, that's what really matters? M: You see, I'm saying it again … R: Does that bother you there? That they (the other team members) didn't listen to you? Are you saying it to me again? ... M: No, it doesn't bother me, but I'm saying, they're wrong … R: OK… M: You see, I'm saying, that is the kind of crappy area for those reasons… I'm telling them not to do it, to not stay in front of me, they stay in front, let them go to hell!

Formalization of the practice

At the end of this fjord, Michel knows that there are bears: he has already seen dens at this spot. The tracks in the snow and the remains of a seal confirm this possibility. While walking on, he is on the lookout. A bear can be hidden behind a block of ice: we might see it at the last second, when he charges. You have to be ready to react. The gun is on Michel's pulka. For everyone's safety, it is better to stay in a group and behind the gun. Michel mentioned that to everyone, but the others continue to stay in front, which annoys him. While walking at his own pace, he remains attentive.

Table 1 : Formalization of Michel's Practice in Relation to the Polar Bear Risk at a Given Moment

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