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The presence of mature masculinity is slowly reshaping contemporary action cinema in the twenty-first century. It is a phenomenon that rejects the unrealistic view that action heroes are embodiments of Apollo and Ares in human flesh. Instead, action heroes are viewed as flawed characters who cannot escape the realities of their corporeality, mortality and humanity. The following chapter is an examination of a particular type of action hero archetype that combines ageing with virtuous and mature masculinity. Here I use Tom Cruise's development and portrayal of Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series as a lens through which to highlight the presence of the virtuous and mature hero archetype in action cinema.

Cruise's representation of heroic masculinity is significant because it achieves three separate goals. First, Cruise's mature masculinity repudiates the hardbody model by showing its deficiencies as a male archetype. Second, it introduces a version of an action hero that emphasises the benefits of ageing and mature masculinity. Lastly, Cruise's onscreen presence redoubles the idea that heroic masculinity is motivated by a deep sense of morality, duty and a desire to serve the greater good. As the model of the mature and virtuous hero becomes more prevalent, as I argue, it not only reshapes action cinema but also produces cinematic representations of heroic masculinity that are more positive in terms of showing the importance of maturity, virtue, and public service.

On 2 September 2015, it was announced that Tom Ford would again be ‘dressing James Bond’, Daniel Craig, in Spectre (Mendes, 2015) after tailoring his suits for Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008) and Skyfall (Mendes, 2012). Ford noted that ‘James Bond epitomises the Tom Ford man in his elegance, style and love of luxury. It is an honour to move forward with this iconic character’.

  With the press launch of ‘Bond 25’(and now titled No Time to Die) on 25 April 2019, it is reasonable to speculate that Ford will once again be employed as James Bond’s tailor of choice, given that it is likely to be Craig’s last outing as 007. Previous actors playing the role of James Bond have all had different tailors. Sean Connery was tailored by Anthony Sinclair and George Lazenby by Dimitro ‘Dimi’ Major. Roger Moore recommended his own personal tailors Cyril Castle, Angelo Vitucci and Douglas Hayward. For Timothy Dalton, Stefano Ricci provided the suits, and Pierce Brosnan was dressed by Brioni. Therefore, this chapter will analyse the role of tailoring within the James Bond films, and how this in turn contributes to the look and character of this film franchise more generally. It aims to understand how different tailors have contributed to the masculinity of Bond: an agent dressed to thrill as well as to kill.

With three credited scriptwriters and five credited directors, the 1967 release of Casino Royale saw a gang of multifaceted James Bond 007s facing off against an army of beautiful, hypersexualised, personality-less female spies, headed by the real James Bond’s neurotic, insecure, American nephew Jimmy. Perhaps this wasn’t Fleming’s intended storyline for Bond’s first outing at Casino Royale, but the resulting parodic outing absorbed and commented upon some of the inherent gendered archetypes of Fleming’s work. What the 1967 Casino Royale accomplishes is a narrative which contrasts varieties of masculinity which are segmented forms of the masculinity defined by Fleming’s Bond. This chapter compares the masculinity of Bond developed in Fleming’s novel, before examining the representations of masculinity inherent within the four key male characters: Sir James Bond (David Niven), Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), Cooper (Terence Cooper) and Dr Noah/Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen). By showing the depictions of masculine elements each of these characters embodies, along with the metanarrative elements of each performer’s persona, this chapter aims to identify how the 1967 Casino Royale both faithfully depicts the masculine elements of Bond while at the same time satirizing Bond’s particular brand of masculinity. This examination ultimately argues that this segmentation of Bondian masculinity is the core point of cohesion in a deeply incoherent, parodic film adaptation of Fleming’s novel.

Three themes dominate Hunting Causes. The first is that cause is a plural concept. The methods and metaphysics of causation, Cartwright believes, are context dependent. Different causal accounts seem to be at odds with one another only because the same word means different things in different contexts. Every formal approach to causality uses a conceptual framework that is “thinner” than causal reality. She lists a bewildering variety of approaches to causation: probabilistic and Bayes-net accounts (of, for example, Patrick Suppes, Clive Granger, Wolfgang Spohn, Judea Pearl, and Clark Glymour), modularity accounts (Pearl, James Woodward, and Stephen LeRoy), invariance accounts (Woodward, David Hendry, and Kevin Hoover), natural experiments (Herbert Simon, James Hamilton, and Cartwright), causal process accounts (Wesley Salmon and Philip Dowe), efficacy accounts (Hoover), counterfactual accounts (David Lewis, Hendry, Paul Holland, and Donald Rubin), manipulationist accounts (Peter Menzies and Huw Price), and others. The lists of advocates of various accounts overlap. Nevertheless, she sometimes treats these accounts as if they were so different that it is not clear why they should be the subject of a single book. And she fails to explain what they have in common. If, as she apparently believes, they do not have a common essence, do they have a Wittgensteinian family resemblance? She fails to explore in any systematic way the complementarities among the different approaches – for example, between invariance accounts, Bayes-nets, and natural experiments – that frequently make their advocates allies rather than opponents.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

Higher education has begun to attend to the importance of collaboration and self-awareness for educating sustainability leaders. However, there has been limited discussion on how to design a pedagogy that supports the development of these competencies, particularly the development of self-awareness. In this chapter, we introduce an experiential pedagogy in which students and faculty work together to develop self-awareness as the basis for sustainability leadership. We present three pedagogical principles that support the emotional learning that is foundational for sustainability leadership: student self-discovery, faculty as co-learners, and a developmentally focused learning environment. We demonstrate how these three principles work together to enable students and faculty to grow their self-awareness, providing the foundation for sustainable leadership. We conclude with a discussion on how management educators can learn from this case to develop sustainability leaders who have the self-awareness and relational competency to lead positive, inclusive organizations that are committed to sustainable business practices.