Résumé
Higher education faces great performance-oriented reforms, pressures to excellence and to adapt model of “good practices”. These reforms modify the control on and into the organizations, strengthen managerial logics, impact the research collectives and the commitment to public values. In this field highly structured, institutional isomorphism can lead to conformity, and also to decoupling in universities conceptualized as complex, multifunctional and loosely coupled. Few research studies explore in depth the impacts of reforms at different levels of universities by taking into account the national institutional context. An embedded case study in a French university reveals a decoupling of sense and form between the central administration (university executives, senior administrative managers) and the research laboratories. These results raise questions: a decoupling to combine legitimacy and efficiency of research, a temporary decoupling or a step to build a hybrid organization?