“Drop your boat!”: The discursive co-construction of project renewal. The case of the Darwin mountaineering expedition in Patagonia

When a project faces an unexpected, ambiguous and risky environment, “drop your tools” often comes up against the reluctance of the actors to accept and implement its renewal. Our contribution aims to explore how team members discursively co-construct the sense of their situation and accept to “drop their tools”. Drawing upon a real-time, in situ ethnographic study of a mountaineering expedition in Patagonia, we conducted a discursive analysis of a project renewal episode. Our paper first contributes to shed light on an unexplored phenomenon: the construction and acceptance of “dropping the tools”. Second, we add to the literature on project renewal. Third, we show how team members make sense in real-time of their environment by drawing on four discursive practices (re-wording, reframing, focusing attention, and reaffirming team cohesiveness) in order to construct and accept project renewal.