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Facing intense global competition and pressure from public authorities, several universities in Europe have engaged in merger and concentration processes. Drawing on two in-depth case studies, this paper considers university mergers as an opportunity to explore the processes involved in the creation of a new organizational structure. In line with recent scholarly calls to revisit the notion of organizational design, we combine insights from three different research streams to address the functional, political, and institutional dynamics that shaped the organizational architecture of the merged universities. Two main results are presented and discussed. First, although these mergers were initiated largely in response to the diffusion of new global institutional scripts, these scripts had little influence on organizational design: deeply institutionalized local scripts prevailed over global mimetic pressures. Second, while these institutional scripts provided many of the basic building blocks of the new universities, in both cases their design was also heavily shaped by time pressures and power games. While a few powerful actors used the merger as an opportunity to promote their own reform agenda, some of the key features of the two merged universities stemmed from choices by exclusion, whose primary aim was the avoidance of conflicts.

Since the 1990s, Charlize Theron has appeared in films from a wide range of genres but has seen significant financial success from starring in action films, such as Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Atomic Blonde (2017). However, unlike some female action leads, she has not solely been defined or pigeonholed by these roles but has been able to transition between action roles and more ‘respectable’ dramatic roles, as well as the other conventions of female celebrity, such as being the face of advertising campaigns for perfume brands.

Theron has notably received several physical injuries during filming, such as breaking her teeth practising fight choreography during the production of Atomic Blonde. These injuries have frequently been added as part of the publicity campaign for the films and Theron's star image overall as signs of ‘authenticity’, leading these action films a sense of increased legitimacy. Tasker states that a female action star's ‘[public] formulation is indicative of the uncertainties generated by her image’ (1993, p. 14). Media attention is divided between focusing on Theron's physicality, both in the sense of the traditional Hollywood gaze and in terms of Theron's molding of her marketable image. Theron has managed to succeed as both a mainstream star and an action heroine. This has enabled Theron to transition between genres and franchises such as The Fate of The Furious (2017), and an Oscar-nominated dramatic role in the biopic Bombshell (2019).

This chapter will unpack the public persona of Charlize Theron as an action film star, exploring both the filmic texts and the presentation of Theron's often complicated and contradictory image in the media.

The purpose of this paper is to understand why people shop at small retailers in their community. The authors investigate the influence of consumers’ civic commitment, measured at behavioural and perceptual levels, on small-retailer patronage (SRP).

Data from 984 respondents represent four French cities that host common town-centre shopping streets and large out-of-town retail parks. A structural equation model applied to the theoretical framework tests the relationships between civic behavioural commitment (CBC), civic perceptual commitment (CPC) and declared SRP.

The more an individual consumer exhibits civic behavioural commitment (CBC) to his/her community, the greater his/her small-retailer patronage (SRP). Furthermore, consumers who express strong civic perceptual commitment (CPC) prefer to patronise small retailers. Results show that CPC has a stronger impact on SRP than CBC does.

If the CPC has stronger effects on SRP than CBC does, town managers can catch people’s attention by communicating civic commitment to enhance CPC. Solidarity could be developed through large-scale social projects to send a strong signal to consumers regarding retailers’ commitment in the community. Finally, the study highlights the role businesses, retailers and consumers play in building communities. Partnerships across all local stakeholders should be built.

This paper is the first to define civic behavioural commitment within consumers’ life place based on social capital theory. Moreover, it offers a new framework for understanding perception of commitment within a community, and its impact on SRP. This measurement scale allows more efficient capturing of civic commitment to communities.

The purpose of this study is to develop a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-safe iron-free electrical actuator for MR-guided surgical interventions.

The paper deals with the design of an MRI compatible electrical actuator. Three-dimensional electromagnetic and thermal analytical models have been developed to design the actuator. These models have been validated through 3D finite element (FE) computations. The analytical models have been inserted in an optimization procedure that uses genetic algorithms to find the optimal parameters of the actuator.

The analytical models are very fast and precise compared to the FE models. The computation time is 0.1 s for the electromagnetic analytical model and 3 min for the FE one. The optimized actuator does not perturb imaging sequence even if supplied with a current 10 times higher than its rated one. Indeed, the actuator’s magnetic field generated in the imaging area does not exceed 1 ppm of the B₀ field generated by the MRI scanner. The actuator can perform up to 25 biopsy cycles without any risk to the actuator or the patient since he maximum temperature rise of the actuator is about 20°C. The actuator is compact and lightweight compared to its pneumatic counterpart.

The MRI compatible actuator uses the B₀ field generated by scanner as inductor. The design procedure uses magneto-thermal coupled models that can be adapted to the design of a variety actuation systems working in MRI environment.

This chapter focuses on spy action as a way to answer the question: where can we find queer female action heroes? The chapter will identify three films – D.E.B.S. (Advocate, 2005), Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, 2017) and The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel, 2018) – worth attention to highlight the potential and problems of the queer female hero in spy action. This chapter examines how each of these spy action films contributes to the ongoing yet uneven development of the female hero as a queer figure in post-millennial action cinema. The chapter will consider to what extent these queer female-led action films may pose a challenge to some of the dominant standards and conventions associated with the action hero, gender roles and the representation of sexuality, but also reinforce others. Some comparisons will be made to James Bond in recognition that the Bond franchise has played an important role in the spy action genre.

Ensuring collaboration between partners involved in a collaborative innovation project is a challenge for project managers. This paper aims to highlight how taking a high-level learning approach can represent a managerial lever. In addition, it analyzes the impact of learning tensions in a partnership context.

The paper focuses on an explorative, longitudinal and in-depth analysis of the Innovative Solutions in Urban Systems project via a qualitative single-case study. The research is inductive and based on data from the field rather than a deductive application of theory.

Collaborative innovation projects represent a high-level learning case. Activity theory is suited to studying the dynamics of learning in collaborative innovation projects. Tensions can fertilize the front-end of collaborative innovation projects.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may be difficult to generalize. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the conceptual framework further.

This article provides a framework for managing tensions in collaborative innovation projects. The results provide also a process to implement all criteria of sustainable development in these projects.

This article highlights to what extent collaborative relations can be developed between participants through a questionnaire with social responsibility attributes. The questionnaire allows to foster participants’ trust.

This approach is original because the authors consider that situations exist that, by definition, belong to “higher-order learning”. Through a case study, they propose a framework to manage this situation.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how French universities can play a key role in generating Smart City (SC) through an innovative Public-Private Partnership (PPP) dedicated to urban transformation.

The authors led an action-research study for five years with several research and pedagogic projects, including users or citizens.

The paper points out main factors of SC development. It also presents shared demonstrators’ characteristics, including industrial scale, sustainability, and citizens’ participation.

This research is experimented with only one regional multi-case study.

Practical implications of this paper include a University of Lorraine diversification strategy through the “Chaire REVES” supported by public and private partners.

At the regional level, industrial-university-territorial partnerships could tackle both societal and economical issues “with,” “for,” and “by” citizens.

Based on the Living Lab concept, this case study shows a concrete regional university strategy involving: user-centric design, collaborative processes, citizens’ workshops, and new financial and organizational answers enabling collaboration between private companies and public institutions. The paper also argues that innovative PPPs involving users are necessary for developing SC.

Optimization processes and movement modeling usually require a high number of simulations. The purpose of this paper is to reduce global central processing unit (CPU) time by decreasing each evaluation time.

Remeshing the geometry at each iteration is avoided in the proposed method. The idea consists in using a fixed mesh on which functions are projected to represent geometry and supply.

Results are very promising. CPU time is reduced for three dimensional problems by almost a factor two, keeping a low relative deviation from usual methods. CPU time saving is performed by avoiding meshing step and also by a better initialization of iterative resolution. Optimization, movement modeling and transient-state simulation are very efficient and give same results as usual finite element method.

The method is restricted to simple geometry owing to the difficulty of finding spatial mathematical function describing the geometry. Moreover, a compromise between imprecision, caused by the boundary evaluation, and time saving must be found.

The method can be applied to optimize rotating machines design. Moreover, movement modeling is performed by shifting functions corresponding to moving parts.

This paper aims to propose a method to evaluate the information obtained on harmonics calculations and to estimate the precision of results using finite element method for an innovative motor topology in which some well-known meshing rules are difficult to apply.

The same magnetostatic problem is solved with several mesh sizes using both scalar and vector potentials magnetics formulations on a complex topology, an axial claw pole motor (ACPM). The proposed method lies in a comparison between the two weak formulations to determine what information is obtained on harmonics calculations and to estimate its precision. Moreover, an original mesh method is applied in the air gap to improve the numerical results.

The precision on harmonics calculations using finite element method on an ACPM is estimated. For the proposed motor and mesh, only the mean value (even with large mesh) and the first harmonic (with fine mesh) of torque are calculated with a good accuracy. This results confirm that the non-respect of the meshing rules have a strong impact on the results and that scalar and vector potentials magnetics formulations do not give exactly the same results. Before using torque harmonics values in vibration calculations, a finite element model has to be validated by using both fomulations.

This method is time-consuming and only applied on an ACPM in this work.

The axial claw pole motor, for which the classic meshing rules cannot be applied, is a complex topology very under-studied. To improve the calculation of space harmonics, the authors proposed to split the airgap into four parts. Then in the two central parts, the meshing step of the structured mesh is equal to the rotating step.