ABSTRACT
Developing work groups able to carry out projects in extreme situations that are evolving, uncertain, and risky (Lièvre, 2005) is a considerable challenge for a growing number of organizations. Until very recently, managing extreme situation was important only to very specifi c organizations, such as nuclear power plants (see Gauthereau & Hollnagel, 2005). However, the question of managing extreme situations is now crucial for more classic organizations working in a socioeconomic environment that also combines complexity, uncertainty, and risk (Berry, 2005). However, we still know very little about the concrete collective mechanisms at work in projects carried out in extreme situations (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), especially in regard to collective competence.
