Umeå researchers conduct unprecedented study at Mt. Everest
NEWS
At the beginning of April, a team of researchers from the Umeå School of Business and Economics will embark on an expedition to the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal. For two months they will study a group of climbers through observations, interviews, helmet cameras, video, and radio traffic. The purpose of this study is to learn more about projects in hazardous environments.
“Over the past two decades, climbing the world's highest mountain has become more and more commercialized. Each season you can read in the media how climbers get killed or left to their fate. Unlike media attention, and most of the research, we will not focus on the accidents, but on how everyday life is organised and how decisions are made,” says Markus Hällgren, project manager of the research team.
The majority of research that deals with projects examines common environments such as construction projects, IT projects, and development projects. But there is a great interest in understanding businesses from a different perspective.
“Hazardous environments are ideal to get an understanding of how groups and individuals make decisions and organise themselves. Making the wrong decision during an expedition may eventually lead to someone’s injury or even death,” says Markus Hällgren.
“In a dangerous environment, decisions and options must be considered carefully. In this consideration process, everyday worries are reduced and behaviors reinforced. Based on this, we can for example understand behavior concerning time and goals in common projects in a different, clearer way.”
The research team will accompany a smaller expedition organiser called Rolwaling Excursions. “It is going to be incredibly interesting to follow their work and take notes about what is needed to guide their international clients to the world's highest mountain,” says Markus Hällgren.
The research team from Umeå is part of the research project TripleED. TripleED (Extreme Environments-Everyday Decisions) is a project funded by Ragnar Söderberg's research foundations and Umeå University’s grant funding. The project is based at the Umeå School of Business and Economics and led by Markus Hällgren. TripleED consists of a team of international scientists who study decision-making processes in extreme environments from an organisational perspective.
For more information about the project, please contact:
Markus Hällgren, Associate professor at Umeå School of Business and Economics, visiting scholar at Stanford University E-mail: markus.hallgren@usbe.umu.se Phone: +1 650 451 8602
