Review

Hostile takeover or joint venture: Connections between institutionaltheory and sport management research

Marvin Washington a,*, Karen D.W. Patterson b

a Physical Education & Recreation and Strategic Management & Organization Faculties, W1-16E Van Vliet Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton,

AB T6G 2H9, United Statesb Organizational Studies, Anderson Schools of Management, University of New Mexico, MSC05-3090, Albuquerque, NM 87131, United States

1. Introduction

It has been more than 30 years since the concept of institutional theory has taken root in the organizational andmanagement theory literature. Not only has institutional theory become a dominant theory in the organization theoryliterature, it has also become a major theory in the sport management literature as well (Kikulis, 2000). Early concerns ofinstitutional theory were rooted in sociology with an original focus on understanding why there was striking similarityamong very diverse organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and how organizations buffer themselves from the demands oftheir environment (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).

Work in institutional theory formalized the research issues in diffusion of innovation studies, distinctions between earlyand late adopters, a focus on the organizational field, and the concern with the ‘‘myth and ceremony’’ of formalorganizational structures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Meyer & Scott, 1983; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).This line of work also investigated how institutions in an organizational field shaped organizational strategies andstructures, invoking Weber’s image of the ‘‘iron cage’’ of organization actions and processes (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).

While the earlier work was focused on issues of stability, current concepts of institutional theory have moved to analysesof institutional change (Dacin, Goodstein, & Scott, 2002), institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), and institutional

Sport Management Review 14 (2011) 1–12

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 10 November 2009

Received in revised form 16 June 2010

Accepted 17 June 2010

Available online 31 July 2010

Keywords:

Institutional theory

Sport management research

Institutional change

Organizational fields

A B S T R A C T

One of the current dominant theories in the management literature is institutional theory.

Scholars within the institutional theory tradition have examined the creation and

evolution of institutions, the impact that institutions have on organizations and their

actions, and the constraints that institutions place on arenas of organizational activity.

Much of institutional theory is reflected within in the sport management literature.

However, we argue in this review piece, that there is more to institutional theory than the

concepts that are currently being used in the sport management literature. First, we

provide a review of the dominant concepts of institutional theory, and a summary of how

institutional theory has been used in the sport management literature. Then we offer two

broad discussion points about the use of institutional theory in sport management

research. The first point is a call for further elaboration of institutional theory in sport

management by examining issues of institutional change and organizational field

dynamics. The second is point as to suggest that scholars extend the use of institutional

theory into different types of sport management questions.

� 2010 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. Published by

Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 780 492 2311; fax: +1 780 492 1008.

E-mail addresses: marvin.washington@ualberta.ca (M. Washington), patterson@mgt.unm.edu (Karen D.W. Patterson).

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entrepreneurship (DiMaggio, 1988). However, institutional theory is still concerned with a fundamental issue: ‘‘why andwith what consequences do organizations exhibit particular organizational arrangements that defy traditional rationalexplanations (Greenwood, Oliver, Suddaby, & Sahlin-Andersson, 2008a, 2008b, p. 31)

Institutional theory analyses have also examined a variety of empirical settings: educational systems, art museums, cityreforms, and state agencies. Recent organizational domains include the accounting industry, radio industry, and health caresystems. In addition to these empirical domains, there has been an integration of institutional theory with a variety of sportempirical settings. Examples include Sport Canada, Rugby, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Sports provide a rich empirical setting to elaborate and illuminate some of the basic tenets of institutional theory.However, we think the marriage between institutional theory and sport research can be less of a hostile takeover—whereinstitutional theory uses sport research just as a setting to highlight tried and true concepts within institutional theory—to ajoint venture—where the sport field can be used to extend institutional theory and institutional theory can direct research insport to questions that are currently not being answered.

Hostile takeovers are instances where a parent organization purchases another organization (the target) and eventuallyreplaces key personnel within the target organization with employees from the parent organization (Hirsch, 1986). This termhostile is in reference to the fact that this process usually occurs against the wishes of the target organization via the parentorganization purchasing a majority share of the target organization. A hostile takeover within the sport managementliterature could be if institutional theory scholars started not only publishing in sport management journals, but also startedto define the evolution of the field in terms of contributions to institutional theory and not as contributions to sportmanagement research.

A joint venture, on the other hand is an arrangement between two organizations where they create a third organizationalform (Park & Ungson, 1997). Usually this arrangement benefits both organizations as both organizations share in the costsand share in the benefits of the new organization. We think the analogy of the marriage between institutional theory andsport management, as a joint venture, is particular useful given:

‘‘. . .that all sport organizations are embedded in organizational fields of some description, and are thus subject toattendant institutional pressures for change.’’ (O’Brien & Slack, 2004, p. 36).

In this paper, we will examine the development of the use of institutional theory in the sport field. After a brief discussionof the development of institutional theory, we will then highlight how the current institutional theory driven sport research.Then by way of discussion, we will focus most of our attention on examining the contributions made by using institutionaltheory in sport, the critiques of this approach, and offer recommendations for future uses of institutional theory in sportresearch.

2. Theoretical development of institutional theory

2.1. Boundaries of literature review

It is always difficult to attempt to trace the historical evolution of a theory, and institutional theory is no different. Oneworries not only about getting the history wrong, but also about missing key articles/moments in the theory’s developmentand of reproducing other already written review pieces. To minimize the critique of the latter type, we will not attempt toproduce an exhaustive review of the literature; there are a few really good review articles and books, and we suggest youattend to these for a more comprehensive overview of the literature (e.g. Greenwood et al., 2008a, 2008b; Powell &DiMaggio, 1991; Scott, 1995, and for a theoretical treatment of institutional theory in sport management, see Kikulis, 2000).

To minimize the critique of the first type, we will not attempt an exhaustive review, but will attempt to locate some of thekey theoretical concepts developed within an institutional perspective. This will be useful as a starting point to map out howinstitutional theory has been used in the sports field. We must admit, however, that we will probably not be able to minimizethe middle critique—that of omitting key articles in the theory—mostly due to space constraints and the large amount ofarticles written within this theory. However, we will attempt to provide a thorough overview of the key concepts byexamining a wide range of key articles and by doing so, we hope to provide as thorough a review as possible given ourconstraints.

2.2. Early developments within the institutional theory literature

The obvious first question to ask is what the institution inside of institutional theory is. Hughes argued that an institutionis an ‘‘establishment of relative permanence of a distinctly social sort’’ (Hughes, 1936, p. 180). While there have been debatesbetween similarity and differences between Selznick’s concept of institutions (1957) and the neo-institutional tradition(Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997; Kraatz & Zajac, 1996), many still use Selznick’s definition of an institution: an institution is ‘‘anorganization infused with value (Selznick, 1957, p. 17)’’.

However, institutions do not exist solely in organizational forms. Much of the Neo-institutional theory analyzesinstitutions as processes, practices and ideas. Berger and Luckman (1967) provide possibly the best illustration of how aninstitution need not be an organization in their explanation of the handshake as an institution in that there is a widelyshared, social understanding of what a handshake means, and there is a shared understanding of the practice that

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communicates the meaning. As Giddens (1984) put forth in his theory of structuration, the structures, such as the handshake,that are created through knowledgeable human actors both constrain and enable social action though repetition. Institutionscan also be represented through ideologies or states that represent a social order or pattern that is perceived as stablethrough chronological repetition. Marriage, racism, and presidency are all examples of institutions despite the absence ofconcrete structures connected to these practices. Rather types of institutions are reinforced through supporting mechanismsand socially understood value systems, which consistently strengthen their viability.

To some, this might read as if everything is an institution; however, we disagree with this perspective and instead followGreenwood et al. (2008a, 2008b), who describe an institution as:

‘‘More-or-less, taken-for-granted repetitive social behaviour that is underpinned by normative systems and cognitiveunderstandings that give meaning to social exchange and thus enable self-reproducing social order.’’ (Greenwoodet al., 2008a, 2008b, pp. 4–5)

2.3. Five key elements of the original institutional theory

From their review of institutional theory, Greenwood et al. (2008a, 2008b) offer five key elements or tenets ofinstitutional theory. The first is that organizations are influenced by their institutional contexts. Many scholars havesuggested that organizations operate in an open system where they are influenced by the environment. Institutional theoryhas gone further by trying to categorize how and why specific parts of the environment influence organizational actions.While strategists or economists might claim that all organizations are embedded in the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of the market(Smith, 1776) and have a singular focus on profit maximization, institutional theory is concerned with why organizationsand other actors do things that might not directly lead to profit maximization. This leads to the second key element:institutional pressures affect all organizations but especially those with unclear technologies. By unclear technologies,Greenwood et al. (2008a, 2008b) is referencing the work of Scott (1991) who argued that some environments, or whatinstitutional theorists call the institutional context, were more technical focused (e.g. banks) while others might be moreinfluenced by dominant institutions (e.g. education, health care). However, one only needs to look at the recent economiccollapse to understand that all organizational arenas are influenced to some degree by dominate institutions.

The result of the presence of institutions inside of organizational arenas leads to the third key element of institutionaltheory in that organizations become isomorphic with their environments to gain legitimacy, which enhances their survival.This element of institutional analyses takes serious the notions that organizations often adopt practices and policies notbecause they help to solve efficiency problems, but because they help the organization to gain (or maintain) their legitimacywith respect to their environment or institutional context (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). However, while organizations adoptpractices to gain legitimacy, this does not mean that adopting these practices produces an internal change inside of theorganization. This relates to the fourth key element of institutional analyses, reflective of the work by Meyer and Rowan(1977): where the institutional environment is buffered from the core technology, practices to gain legitimacy may becontrary to practices for efficiency, and conformity to the environment may be decoupled. The last key element argues thatonce a practice becomes viewed as essential for legitimacy and is supported by a dominant institution, then that practicebecomes an institution. This has also become widely accepted as the main definition of an institution but really refers to thecharacteristics that are present when institutionalization is achieved. Institutionalized practices are taken-for-granted,widely accepted, and resistant to change.

To elaborate further on these five key elements, we will now review some key concepts in institutional theory:isomorphism, institutionalization, legitimacy, organizational fields, institutional logics, and institutional change.

3. Key tenets of institutional theory

3.1. Isomorphism

The central idea of institutional isomorphism is that the environment (or institutional context) pressures organizations toadopt specific practices and processes to survive. However, institutional theorists argue the connection between adoptionand survival might be true, but this connection is based upon the myth that adopting these specific practices and processesproduces a competitive advantage for the organization (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). These myths emerge as solutions to widelyperceived problems of organizing and become rationalized when they are popularly believed to constitute the propersolutions to these problems. ‘‘As more organizations conform to these myths they become more deeply institutionalizedwhich subsequently leads to institutional isomorphism (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008, p. 78)’’.

The basic idea behind isomorphism is that organizations look to the environment for clues to understand appropriatecourses of action. Organizations facing a similar environment will eventually adopt the same courses of action, which willresult in them appearing more similar over time. ‘‘The concept that best captures the process of homogenization isisomorphism. In Hawley’s (1968) description, isomorphism is a constraining process that forces one unit in a population toresemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions’’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, p. 149). DiMaggio andPowell (1983) outlined three pressures that lead organizations to become increasingly similar: coercive, mimetic, andnormative pressures. Coercive pressures result from power relations and political structures. While this often looks likestrong governmental or regulatory pressures these coercive pressure could come from any actor that has the potential to

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sanction organizations if they do not comply with their wishes or demands. Mimetic pressures arise from uncertainty in thatorganizations often copy other successful organizations in an effort to gain legitimacy with their peers (Haunschild & Miner,1997). Often the actions that are adopted have no real technical merit in that organizations might adopt solutions forproblems they might not actually have (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). Normative pressures occur as organizations draw uponsimilar resource pools in terms of consultants, university graduates, and conferences (Slack & Hinings, 1994).

DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) theoretical project in isomorphism received early empirical treatment from a variety ofresearch. Tolbert and Zucker (1983) examined the adoption of civil service reform among cities between 1880 and 1935.They found that in the early stages civil service reform adoption was a response to conflict generated by different ideas as tothe role of government between the business elites and politically organized immigrant groups. However, in the later stages,none of these factors were significant; it appeared that cities adopted civil service reform, not because they had a problem,but ‘‘because of social legitimacy, cities will begin to adopt it as a ‘‘social fact’’, regardless of any particular citycharacteristics’’ (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983, p. 30). In his study of the National Endowment for the Arts, DiMaggio (1983)described how the federal government, though not offering much in the way of material resources, produced dramaticchange in the arts field. States developed state-level NEA organizations to increase their technical rationality and managerialefficiency in efforts to obtain one of the NEA block grants, an example of mimetic isomorphism. Slack and Hinings (1994)examined how the Canadian Federal Government produced dramatic change in an organizational field by applyingnormative isomorphism pressures. They examined 36 national-level sports organizations. Many of these organizations,under environmental pressure from the Canadian National Olympic Organization—Sport Canada, adopted a morebureaucratic professional design. This pressure was brought about via the creation of Quadrennial Planning, which called fora new ‘‘organizational design type, an organization which was highly structured along bureaucratic lines controlled byprofessions with volunteer help’’ (Slack & Hinings, 1994, p. 807). In short, in order to receive the funds a sport organizationhad to adopt the design. While only 12 of the 36 organizations actually adopted the design, the variation between the 36organizations (in terms of structure and design) was significantly reduced. Slack and Hinings argued that the increasingisomorphism of the 36 organizations was also due to the increasing normative pressures brought about as professionstransferred from one organization to another and as the organizations drew upon the same sport consultants.

3.2. Organizational fields

While most scholars have extended DiMaggio and Powell’s notations of isomorphism (Mizruchi & Fein, 1999), that wasnot the only influential idea in their paper. It was DiMaggio and Powell’s 1983 article that many argue ushered in research on‘‘the organizational field as a useful level of analysis and provided greater specificity to understanding and theorizing abouthow, why, and which organizations respond in particular ways to institutional expectations (Greenwood & Meyer, 2008, p.261).’’ As a new unit of analysis, the field offers a number of distinct advantages over the more traditional economicconstructs such as industry or market or existing units of analysis in organization theory such as population, clusters ornetworks.

DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 143), emphasizes the structural and functional aspects of the concept, defining anorganizational field as ‘‘. . .those organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: keysuppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies and other organizations that produce similar services orproducts.’’ By introducing organizational actors, such as suppliers, consumers and regulators, into the construct, DiMaggio andPowell distinguish the organizational field from more traditional economic units of analysis by extending the range of potentialactors to include those that are not necessarily competitive and that are not directly engaged in product output. This conceptionof a field, while still firmly centered on measures of production and competition, expands the boundaries of previous units ofanalysis by incorporating a wider array of organizational actors who interact in a consistent and meaningful way.

Writers acknowledge that, in addition to describing structural relations between actors, fields also describe sharedmeaning systems between organizations (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996; Scott, 1995). That is, underlying a givenorganizational field, there is a defined ‘‘common meaning systems template’’ based on ‘‘shared cognitive or normativeframeworks’’ (Scott, 1995, p. 5). Common languages, shared schema or understandings and common ideologies, therefore,may describe the boundaries of an organizational field. Field actors engage in a common rule structure and shared normativeunderstandings. Fields, therefore, may be constituted as cognitive communities (Porac, Thomas, & Baden-Fuller, 1989).Empirical work has examined change processes in fields such as California Thrift Agencies (Haveman & Rao, 1997), Niagaraarea hotels (Ingram & Inman 1996), art museums (DiMaggio, 1991), community colleges (Brint & Karabel, 1991), the radioindustry (Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991), and the early days of the automobile industry (Rao, 1994).

In their introduction to the special issue on institutional Change in Academy of Management Journal, Dacin et al. (2002)offer the following summary statement of the research on organizational fields:

‘‘Although most of the articles in this special issue operate at the field level, their authors tend to limit their attentionto changes within a single form, a single population of organizations. In each case, dominant forms are selected forstudy, the analysis revealing how organizational attributes, linkages, and population characteristics variously affectthe adoption of a revised form or practice. Such studies have been the meat and potatoes of macro researchers over thepast two decades, often combining the ideas and methods of institutional and population ecologist to examinepopulation-level change processes.’’ (2002, p. 50)

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3.3. Institutional logics

Friedland and Alford (1991) suggests that organizational fields operate under diverse belief systems that differfundamentally in their content, nature of central assumptions and ordering principles that they refer to as institutionallogics. They describe five dominant logics: capitalism, family, bureaucracy, democracy, and Christianity. These institutionallogics identify varying sources of interest and identities and divergent bases of action. The different logics have differentstatus orders, resource distributions, and sets of legitimate actions (Fligstein, 1996; Friedland & Alford, 1991; Heimer, 1996).These logics are inherently contradictory in that there are different legitimate actions and activities depending upon whichlogic is at play in a given field. ‘‘Institutional contradictions are the bases of the most important political conflicts in oursociety; it is through these politics that the institutional structure of society is transformed’’ (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p.256). These contending logics provide a source of contradiction in the field in the sense they represent coherent alternativesto both the dominant status ordering and to the current legitimate activity in the field.

Many scholars have used the concept of institutional logic to understand various organizational field processes. DiMaggio(1991) examined the struggle in the emergent field of museums. He found that there was a contradiction between two sets oforganizing principles ‘‘the Gilman Model and the Data Model’’. His work then discusses how the conflicts between these modelsultimately lead to the current model of art museums. Haveman and Rao (1997) examined the evolution of savings and loanindustry in California. They developed and tested the claim that organizations take form from a wider moral sentiment or logicand that the robustness of that logic can be observed in empirical patterns of the organizational forms. They found that as theinstitutional logic, or ‘‘theory of moral sentiment’’ changed, different forms of organizations were founded.

This style of research (examining the evolution of institutional logics on the founding patterns of new organizationalforms) has also been conducted to examine the college textbook publishing industry (Thornton, 2004), the emergence offinance professionals (Lounsbury, 2002) and changes in health care associations (Galvin, 2002). Kraatz and Moore (2002)suggest that organizational leaders come with a ready-made logic and thus key changes to leadership might be moments ofchanging logics. Seo and Creed (2002, p. 232) suggest that ‘‘the seed of institutional change grows out of one of the coresources of institutional contradictions—the fundamental misalignment between the existing social arrangements and theinterests and needs of actors who constitute and inhabit those very arrangements’’. Logics are inherently contradictory andthus are at best temporally stable in terms of its power over the field.

3.4. Institutionalization/legitimacy

While the previously discussed concepts really describe characteristics of institutions and their effects on organizations, aseparate line of research describes how practices and processes become institutions. However, the process ofinstitutionalization that takes place with regard to organizations and practices is often more conceptually challengingthan the notion of an institution. Institutionalization is the process by which ‘‘social processes, obligations, or actualitiescome to take on a rule-like status in social thought and action (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 341).

The social construction of an institution takes place through collective cognitive acceptance (Porac, Thomas, Wilson,Paton, & Kanfer, 1995), but such acceptance is driven by the legitimacy of defined or implicit practices (DiMaggio & Powell,1983; Suchman, 1995). As such, practices become repeated, entropy and inertia reinforce the acceptance of these practices orideas and a chronological cycle ensues (Oliver, 1992). Therefore, institutionalization becomes this specified process of thesocial construction of value and the attainment of legitimacy. The institutionalization of practices may be attempted byorganizations that desire an increase in legitimacy and ‘‘taken-for-grantedness’’ where certain practices can be seen as theonly natural way of action. Such organizations may enact institutional strategies aimed at defining boundaries and activitiesthat afford the organization more legitimacy within the institutional context (Lawrence, 1999; Washington, Forman,Suddaby, & Ventresca, 2005). Collectively, these assertions can lead to the conclusion that the process of institutionalizationtakes place through repetitive categorization, organizational homogenization, and the construction of socially accepted,rule-like conceptualizations of reality.

The fact that organizations develop practices and processes for legitimacy reasons is one of the core insights ofinstitutional theory (Scott, 1995; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). While there are different research traditions in the study oflegitimacy, they share some similarities:

‘‘. . .(l)egitimacy is a problem in the construction of social reality. It consists of the construal of a social object asconsistent with cultural beliefs, norms, and values that are presumed to be shared by others in the local situation andperhaps more broadly by actors in a broader community. Through this construal process, what is becomes what isright. . .it is a collective process. . .it comes about through and depends on the implied presence of a social audience,those assumed to accept the encompassing framework of beliefs, norms, and values, and, therefore the construal of theobject as legitimate. Legitimacy depends on apparent, though not necessarily actual, consensus among actors. . .as acollective construction of social reality, legitimacy has both a cognitive dimension that constitutes the object for actorsas a valid, objective social feature and a normative, prescriptive dimension that represents the social object as right’’(Johnson, Dowd, & Ridgeway, 2006, p. 57).

We take the view that organizational legitimacy refers to the degree of cultural support for an organization—the extent towhich the array of established cultural accounts provide explanations for its existence, functioning, and jurisdiction, and lack

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or deny alternatives (Meyer & Scott, 1983, p. 201). One of the challenges with legitimacy has not only been with determiningways to measure it (Deephouse, 1999; Kraatz & Zajac, 1996), but also with ways to tease it apart from other concepts, mostnotably status (Washington & Zajac, 2005) and reputation (Fombrun, 1996).

3.5. Organizational and institutional change

Early work within institutional theory tended to focus on stability and isomorphism as a response to DiMaggio andPowell’s central concern with why so many organizations structure, grow, and behave so similarly. However, by 1988 theshift of institutional theory moved from stability to change, from isomorphism to agency. ‘‘We believe that the theoreticalpieces by DiMaggio (1988) and Oliver (1991, 1992) represent a signal shift in the attention of institutional researcherstoward the impact of individual and collective actors on the institutions that regulate the fields in which they operate. Fromthese early works has emerged an important tradition within institutional theory that explores theoretically and empiricallythe ways in which actors are able to create, maintain and disrupt institutions’’ (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 5). FromDiMaggio’s (1988) insights about bringing power and agency into the institutional lexicon, scholars started discussinginstitutional strategy (Lawrence, 1999), institutional change (Haveman & Rao, 1997; Leblebici et al., 1991) and institutionalentrepreneurship (Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005).

Recently, scholars have begun to examine how organizations compete for legitimacy. Lawrence (1999) calls thisinstitutional strategy. Institutional strategy extends the current literature on organizational strategy, by raising the level ofanalysis to the institutional level. The strategic moves made by interest associations represent a key component of thedomain of institutional strategy. Lawrence (1999) identified institutional strategy distinct from organizational strategy:‘‘patterns of actions that are concerned with managing the institutional structure. . .institutional strategy demands the abilityto articulate, sponsor and defend particular practices and organizational forms as legitimate or desirable, rather than theability to enact already legitimated practices or leverage existing social rules’’ (Lawrence, 1999, pp. 162–163). Lawrencedescribes two generic institutional strategies: initiatives to set membership rules and procedures to establish standards ofpractice. These exclusionary mechanisms account for significant influence over the structure of institutions fields and theorganizations within them.

The actors and organization involved in institutional strategy have also received attention in institutional analysis.Institutional entrepreneurs have been defined as those actors who can motivate members of the field toward commonunderstandings and advantageous institutional arrangements, and who have sufficient resources to realize theirinterests (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 1997; MacGuire et al., 2004). Institutional entrepreneurs can be seen throughoutseveral stages of field evolution. In early stages, institutional entrepreneurs offer a competing logic of organization to anincipient field in need of structure (Dorado, 2005; Maguire et al., 2004). After the field becomes established, institutionalentrepreneurs are most often ‘‘actors trying to maintain or fight the status quo’’ (Fligstein, 1997, p. 401; Rao, Monin, &Durand, 2003). Institutional entrepreneurs represent significant influence within a field based on power position,influence, resources and opportunity and if successful, such actors can greatly benefit from their guidance of theindustry.

The concept of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) offers an important new way to frame institutionalanalysis, connecting disparate (at least in the empirical literature) institutional processes such as creating, maintaining,and disrupting institutions. With its focus on practical action within organizational fields, institutional work is concernedwith the status of the institution itself, rather than simply the impact of institutions on other actors in an organizationalfield (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). Lawrence and Suddaby (2006, p. 36) assert that the institutional work of maintaininginstitutions ‘‘involves supporting, repairing or recreating the social mechanisms that ensure compliance.’’ It is important tonote that institutional work in this definition may include repetition and support of existing practices as well as changes inthe social mechanisms of compliance that may be needed to maintain institutions. For example, democracy as aninstitution persists not only because there are deliberate activities designed to reproduce it (Jepperson, 1991), but alsobecause membership boundaries and rules of participation are changed (as in the case with women’s suffrage and theVoting Rights Act in the United States) in response to challenges that problematize practices associated with theinstitution.

Maintenance work is the active, strategic process of institutions to maintain their status and power in the field. Lawrenceand Suddaby (2006, p. 37) identified two major categories of maintenance work. The first category involves the use of formsof regulatory and legitimate authority: the creation of rules and standards; establishing policing and enforcement processes;and the use of deterrence strategies designed to thwart threats to the institution. The second category of institutional workrelies less on forms of legitimate authority, and more upon processes of internalization by reinforcing the normative andcognitive bases for the institution (Selznick, 1957; Washington, Boal, & Davis, 2008). These include valorizing or demonizingpeople who represent positive or negative aspects of normative foundations; the artful repetition of stories from the past torepresent the normative bases of the institution; and processes that actively infuse normative meaning into the routines andpractices of every day institutional life.

In the next section, we describe the work that has been done in the sport literature that uses institutional theory. Usingthe categories described above (isomorphism, organizational fields, institutional logics, institutionalization, andinstitutional change) we examine how institutional theory has been used. After this section, by way of a discussion, wereview missed opportunities and suggest directions for future research.

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4. Institutional theory in sport management literature

Institutional theory has become a dominant research tradition in the organization sciences. The original papers ofDiMaggio and Powell (1983), Meyer and Rowan (1977), and Tolbert and Zucker (1983) have citations counts that number inthe thousands. Thus, it is not that much of a surprise that institutional theory is used in sport studies. One of the original ideasbehind institutional theory, that organizations are influenced by their institutional context (Greenwood et al., 2008a, 2008b),foreshadowed the potential takeover of sport research by institutional scholars. One of the issues that make sport unique isthe large number of potential stakeholders and ‘‘license-holders’’ of sport. Where most for profit organizations arepotentially worried about suppliers, distributors, and customers, as O’Brien and Slack noted, ‘‘All sport organizations areembedded in organizational fields, and are subject to pressures from key suppliers, resource and product consumers,competitors and regulatory agencies. This makes the organizational field level of analysis extremely apropos for analyses oforganizational changes in sport’’ (O’Brien & Slack, 2003, p. 419). As organizational fields are major component of theinstitutional theory perspective, it would make sense that sport scholars have this perspective to understand sport issues.

4.1. Isomorphism

The concept of isomorphism has been well researched within the sport management literature. For example, Slack andHinings and colleagues (Amis, Slack, & Hinings, 2004; Danisman, Hinings, & Slack, 2006; Slack & Hinings, 1994) havepublished numerous studies examining the changes in a variety of National Sport Organizations (NSOs) that are a part ofSport Canada. Slack and Hinings (1994) examined the impact on changes to 36 NSO as a result of institutional pressure fromSport Canada. The found that as Sport Canada has created pressures for NSO to adopt a more professional bureaucraticstructure, there was a reduction in the variations of NSO structures. Similar to other institutional theory studies, Slack andHinings then provide a discussion of the impact of the three different types of institutional pressures and how theycontributed to this reduction in NSO structures.

The isomorphism hypothesis in institutional theory has also been used to explain the relationship between US statepolitical ideology and the distance between the women’s (or forward) golf tees and the men’s tees (Arthur, Van Buren, & DelCampo, 2009), the increasing formalization within a Canadian amateur ice hockey organization (Stevens & Slack, 1998), thelow percentage of black coaches in the NCAA (Cunningham, Sagas, & Ashley, 2001), the relationship between the status ofsoccer clubs in the English Premier League and their website design (Lamertz, Carney, & Bastien, 2008), the relationshipbetween State sport Policy in Norway and similarity of goals among sport clubs in Norway (Skille, 2009). Phelps andDickson (2009) examined the naming choices of the New Zealand Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey clubs. They found thatboth clubs drew upon the legitimacy of the All Black’s Rugby club and the Fern as the national flower to name their club.They suggest this finding argues that isomorphism (in this case naming conventions) leads to legitimacy (in this case socialsupport for women and men’s ice hockey). Indeed, similar to the pronouncements made by Mizruchi and Fein (1999) andDacin et al. (2002), the isomorphism hypothesis of institutional theory has been well researched in the sport managementliterature.

Research in this tradition is starting to analyze changes in sport organizations by contrasting institutional pressures toother explanations of organizational change. Cunningham and Ashley (2001) examined if there were different templatesof decision making at the athletic director level for different levels of sport participation. Specifically, they compared theresults of a questionnaire asking Division I, II, and III athletic directors about the essential activities of their job. The corehypothesis is that if there was institutional pressure, than there will be significant differences in the activities of their jobbetween institutions. They also compared this hypothesis to two alternative explanations: population ecology, whichwould argue that there would be little differences between the levels, and strategic choice, which would argue that there,would be variation between the levels and that the variation would not be a predictor of athletic department success.While one could argue over the way Cunningham and Ashley (2001) operationalized institutional isomorphism versuspopulation ecology isomorphism, this project does extend older sport related institutional theory by comparing it toother theories.

4.2. Organizational field

Research in the organizational field tradition is one of the places where the research in institutional theory has movedfaster than the research in the sport related institutional theory tradition. O’Brien and Slack (2003, 2004), examined theorganizational field of professional Rugby in England. However, organizational field in this sense was use more as anempirical setting than it was theorized in the sense of how an organizational field allows scholars to examine particularorganizational phenomena beyond a more strict organizational set or industry analyses. Washington and colleagues(Washington, 2004; Washington & Ventresca, 2008) have examined the institutional change of collegiate athletics andcollege sports. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s notions of organizational field (Bourdieu, 1992), which views fields as arenas ofstruggle and domination, Washington and his colleagues examine the strategies that the NCAA developed and implementedto become the dominant institution in the field of college athletics (Washington, 2004). An organizational field perspectivewas also used to examine how the NCAA came dominant amateur basketball (Washington & Ventresca, 2008), and women’sand small college athletics (Washington, 2004).

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4.3. Institutional logics

Similar to the movement in institutional theory to understand the logics of institutions and how these logics are eithersupported, shaped, or maintained by institutional actions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), there is a growing literature oninstitutional logics of sport institutions. O’Brien and Slack (2003, 2004) examined the emergence of a professional logic inEnglish Rugby Union. O’Brien and Slack (2003) provide a rich analysis isolating the organizational field level factors thatresulted in a change in logics for the English Rugby Union. They then go on to examine how the logic changed. What isfascinating about this project and the work of O’Brien and Slack (2004) is they rely upon Prahalad and Bettis’ notion ofinstitutional logic (Bettis & Prahalad, 1995; Prahalad & Bettis, 1986) as opposed to the work of Friedland and Alford (1991); itis the latter work most often referenced in institutional projects.

While both views of institutional logics are similar, there are some subtle differences in terms of the archetypes ofinstitutional logics and the agency involved in producing or maintaining an institutional logic. Friedland and Alford (1991)argues that logics reside inside of institutions and these institutions then jockey for position (much like horseracing) with thewinner of the institutional conflict becoming the dominant institution and structuring the field in a way that privileges them.Bettis and Prahalad (1995) on the other hand, argued that logics are at the field level and are thus upheld by a connectednessof field participants and not one dominant institution. Recent work by Southall, Nagel, Amis, and Southall (2008) hasexamined the institutional logics of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I men’s basketball tournament.Southall et al. (2008), tested to see if the proposed education based dominant logic of the NCAA was reflected in the televisedbroadcasts of the Men’s basketball tournament. They found that the percentage of content related to the education missionof the NCAA shows a conflict between the education logic of the NCAA and the commercial logic of the NCAA tournament. Asimilar study was conducted on the NCAA women’s basketball Division I tournament and similar results were found(Southall & Nagel, 2008). In addition to examining the introduction of a professional logic into the Rugby Union, O’Brien andSlack (1999) examined the deinstitutionalization of the notion of amateurism in RFU.

4.4. Institutionalization/legitimacy

There have been relatively fewer studies found in the sport based institutional theory literature on theinstitutionalization of sport institutions. Washington (2004) and Washington and Ventresca (2008) examined how theNCAA came to be a dominant institution in amateur athletics and how men’s college basketball came to be a dominantinstitution inside of the field of amateur basketball. Cunningham offers a provocative essay on how gender inequality hasbecome institutionalized within sport organizations (Cunningham, 2008).

4.5. Institutional change

Similar to the lack of research on sport from an organizational field perspective, newer concepts of institutional changeare also absent from the sport management literature. One exception is the work of Kikulis. Kikulis (2000) offers an insightfulupdate and call for research on understanding institutional change in sport organizations. Summarizing the literature oninstitutional change in sport organizations, she comments:

Recognizing the importance of institutional arguments for understanding change in NSOs, the arguments in previousresearch have emphasized the institutional pressures or the adoption of more professional and business-likemanagement practices and the institutionalization of these practices in these organizations. These arguments,however, have a number of limitations that when exposed, highlight the need to consider how NSOs changed theirinstitutional structure of governance and decision making rather than how the institutional environment has changedNSOs (Kikulis, 2000, p. 300).

While Kikulis was talking explicitly about institutionalization studies of the Canadian NSO field, her comment about theneed to understand the changes to the institutional structure as opposed to examining how institutions influencesorganizational structures is applicable to other sport related institutional studies also.

The proceeding discussion provides evidence of how institutional theory has informed sport management research. Muchof this research seems ‘‘one-way’’ much like a takeover where efforts from one organization come to dominant therelationship. However, in this case, it appears that the direction of the research could be described as sport managementscholars using institutional theory to inform sport processes and practices. In the section that follows, we provide ideas thatcould move the current relationship away from a takeover and towards a joint venture. To do this, we also describe placeswhere not only sport management can benefit from using institutional theory, but also where institutional theory canbenefit from using sport as an empirical setting.

5. Discussion

While it is perfectly justifiable for sport scholars to use institutional theory to explain sport phenomena, the currentapproach is limiting. A crude summary of the above research on institutional theory and sport could argue that all theresearch in this tradition has done is demonstrate that the sport field operates under institutional pressures similar to other

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industries. Thus, while this might advance the scope and reach of institutional theory, it does not really extend the theory;much like a parent company in one country taking over a target company in another country just to get access to thosecustomers. While the parent company gains customers, the parent country might not be interested in adjusting the productof service based upon the desires of the customers in the target company.

Specifically, there are three concerns that we have about the marriage between institutional theory and sport that shouldbe considered as this evolution of institutional sport research continues. The first is that we are not sure if the sport literatureneeds more isomorphism studies. As there are now very well know concepts about how institutions pressure organizationsin a similar institutional context, much is also known about how institutional pressure mechanisms work in a sport context.Our major concern is that reproducing isomorphism studies in the sport literature does not contribute to the overallinstitutional theory development, nor does it present anything beyond the typical ‘‘dominant institutions constrainorganizational action’’ tenet that is already known in the literature.

This is not to say that we should abandon isomorphism all together. Future research could move beyond showing thatthere are isomorphism processes at work in sport fields to examine how isomorphism works. For example, while the work ofSlack and his colleagues has done a thorough job of explaining how Sport Canada attempted to influence the structures ofCanadian National Sport Organizations, what has yet to be answered is, are the organizations that responded to SportCanada’s pressure more successful (in terms of winning medals, receiving financial incentives, or in terms of survival) thatCNSOs that did not? Similarly, what factors lead some CNSOs to change and others to stay the same?

The second concern we have is with the growing trend of studies examining institutional logics. Friedland and Alford’s(1991) original concern with institutional logics was to examine how dominant concepts of organizing (logics) resulted in adifference in organizational form. For example, organizations would be different and operate differently if they weredeveloped based upon the logic of the state, church, professions, or capitalism. Logic studies in sport could benefit from thisdiscussion, by not just examining an organization, industry, or field change from one logic to another, but by examiningwhere the logic shift came from. Was the shift in logic due to an exogenous shock? Maybe the contending logic was always‘‘lurking in the shadows’’ in the organizational field and eventually gained enough support to challenge the dominant logic?

In addition to examining where logic changes come from, sport studies could also benefit from more thorough measuresof the change in logics. Ironically, while much of the institutional literature uses quantitative studies to measure shifts inlogics, most of the studies in the sport management literature are qualitative in nature and use texts or interviews to assertthat the logic has changed. These two perspectives are highly complementary and both areas could make better use ofexisting approaches to measure logic shifts. While qualitative approaches can provide for a deeper understanding of the logicchange process, quantitative analyses can provide clear measures, if the validity and reliability of the measures is ensured.While one methodology is not superior to another, the use of both could provide for much stronger conclusions.

Our third concern is with the relative lack of research on organizational fields and institutional change. It seems like thesport field has created its own ‘‘iron cage’’ of institutional theory work by only publishing work that examines institutionalstability or radical change at the logic level. We think we need more elaboration of fields in terms of power, status, andhistory of institutions and the effects on organizations and we need more attention to the factors that change institutionalarrangement or practices. For example, there are numerous studies examining how the institution of the NCAA came todominate collegiate athletics, more attention could be given to examining why this arrangement of the NCAA at the top ofthe field and other institutions occupying a niche position came about. What about the other institutions in the field ofcollege athletics (be it the NAIA or more niche arrangements like the National Christian College Athletic Association)? Howare these institutions affecting the field of college athletics?

We think there are other potential uses of institutional theory and sport research. We think there could be a joint ventureresearch program where both the empirical setting and the theoretical concepts are mutually beneficial. In Section 2.3 weargued that there were five basic tenets of institutional research; 1) organizations are in institutional contexts; (2)institutional pressures affect organizations with unclear technologies; (3) organizations become isomorphic with theirenvironment to gain legitimacy; (4) practices to gain legitimacy are often decoupled from practices for efficiency; and (5)once a practice becomes institutionalized it is often hard to change. In our earlier discussion, we argued that a significantportion of sport related institutional theory resides in the first and second tenet. Indeed, probably the reason why there is somuch institutional sport related research is because sport is a setting where there are strong and diverse sets of institutionalpressures. But what about the other tenets? There are many unanswered questions in sport research that could be examinedwithin a new(er) version of institutional theory. For example, Tolbert and Zucker (1983) conclude that institutional theoryhas focused attention on the role of history in organizational processes. However, in a comparative sense, some sportorganizations have held on to their history much more closely than others have? American Football has clearly put in placerules (moving from unclear technologies to more clear technologies) to curb violence on the field, however, professionalhockey appears to be maintaining its historical institution of allowing fighting on the ice, even in the face of growing pressureto reduce injuries.

In addition to institutional theory shaping sport research, sports can also shape institutional theory. For example, recentinstitutional theory examines the role of discourse and framing on understanding institutional change (Cunningham, 2009;Weber & Glynn, 2006; Zilber, 2002). Often the data here is either proprietary (interviews) or difficult to access and analyze(internal documents, congressional hearings or laws). However, sport is an area where data are in abundance; newspapers,magazines, internet chat-rooms and websites, are all filled with issues pertaining to sports. One could use sports to examinethe different mechanisms that actors use to shape discourse around an issue and could also use the different media outlets to

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shape and describe a particular field. The rich context and sheer amount of information available in sport could be conduciveto understanding the processes commonly assumed, but rarely addressed in institutional theory research.

Another important contribution sport research could provide to institutional theory is to extend the scope of the theory.Many studies using institutional theory focus on what makes organizations similar or legitimate but mainly in traditional forprofit or highly embedded industries. Sport is an area that is highly non-traditional along many important dimensions,including competitive models, structure, and performance periods. These differences can allow for studies that expand theunderstanding of institutional processes, particularly highlighting the similarities in high performing organizations and thedifferences in temporal focus. The clear and protracted definition of time frame and top performer can be incredibly useful toinstitutional theorists in illustrating the microprocesses inherent in institutions (Powell & Colyvas, 2008) but largely under-represented in institutional studies.

6. Conclusion

Institutional theory has become a dominant theory in the organizational sciences (Greenwood et al., 2008a, 2008b). Basedupon the research combining sport and institutional theory, we have our own set of ‘‘tenets’’. First, we know that sportorganizations draw upon and are informed by wider logics of action. Whether it is how diversity in society affects diversity insport, or how sports draw upon conventions of legitimacy to gain their own legitimacy, much research has shown that sportsare not separate from society. Second, we know that sport fields are sites of conflict and struggle at both the logic level and atthe governance level. Often the logic level revolves around issues of amateurism versus professionalism (in terms of both payand decision making). However, conflict also revolves around who gets to make claims on the sport in terms of theassociation that governs the sport and the stakeholders that want to shape the sport for a specific purpose. Third, we alsoknow that the sport field is a location at the intersection of the technical and institutional environment, which increases thetendency of actions for legitimacy to be decoupled from actions for performance. This is evident in terms of research thatexamines how changes are framed and negotiated within sport that may or may not lead to better performance on the field.

As we conclude this analysis, we want to provide some direction as to where we think institutional theory – sport relatedresearch should go. One major contribution that institutional theory can make to the sport literature is theorizing theemergence, stability, or decline of sport related institutions. Sport is one of those fields that are impacted more by itsinstitutional environment, than its technical environment (Scott, 1991). However, there is a lack of research onunderstanding how dominant sport institutions stay in place. For example, while there have been numerous economicexplanations of examining the NCAA as a cartel, much insight can be gained if we analyzed the institutional nature of theNCAA. As such, we could examine the strategies created by the NCAA to maintain its dominance and legitimacy. Similarstudies could examine international institutions such as the International Olympic Committee and its bid process, highlyvisible institutions such as FIBA, NBA, or EUFA, or even more local institutions like the stability of local sport organizations. Asinstitutional theory has developed a theoretical language to examine the work of institutions (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca,2009), sport research could compliment this work via empirical analyzes of how institutions grow, mature and decline, orresist decline.

Keeping with this theme, sport researchers could also more deeply examine the sport field landscape. While it looks likethere are only a handful of major sports and sporting events in the world, new sports are being developed all the time.Likewise, some traditional sports are on the decline and are either disbanding (Arena Football League for example), or arebeing regulated to smaller niches in the sport landscape. Here, sport scholars examine issues of field development byanswering the Dacin et al. (2002) call for better research in organizational field analyses. In Section 3, we quoted the Dacinet al. (2002) summary of the literature on organizational field. They continue to say ‘‘Such studies (speaking of organizationalfield studies) are of great value, but they pose a risk; the danger of ignoring other types of changes underway in actors thatresult in more profound transformations in fields. Such processes include, (1) changes in relations among existingorganizations, (2) changes in boundaries of existing organizations, (3) the emergence of new populations, (4) changes in fieldboundaries, and (5) changes in governance structures (2002, p. 50).’’ The sport landscape is ripe with empirical examinationsof changing relationships (FIBA, NBA, and NCAA with regards to basketball for example), changing boundaries (boxing,mixed martial arts, and traditional martial arts), new populations (growth in poker as a sport), changes in field boundaries(Canadian schools joining the NCAA), and governance structures (IOC versus the local Olympic committee’s responsibilitieswith regards to hosting an Olympic event).

Lastly, we call for better attention to both the micro and macro mechanisms concerning institutional analyses. We are notthe first ones to suggest this. At the macro-level, further research in this area, while adding to the generalizability of thefindings of this research, would also aid our understanding of how change evolves in organizational fields in sport context. Atthe micro-level, future case study analyses of individual sport organizations confronting fieldlevel change would shedfurther light on how, for example, interest-driven organizational behavior affects organizational strategic responses to suchfield level pressures’’ (O’Brien & Slack, 2004, p. 36). Again, the irony here is that with regards to institutional theory insociology or management, often the call is for micro-level studies as typically institutional analysis examines fields andinstitutions from a macro-level. Micro and macro-mechanisms that support and enable institutional change are twoadditional components that have not been largely examined. Determining the necessary behaviors, actions, supportingagencies, etc. that are needed to bring about institutionalization of a new practice would be largely beneficial for researchersand practitioners alike.

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Here, we think that sport management can benefit from a more macro perspective. Most institutional theory studies insport take for granted that the institutions they are studying are legitimate and stable. We feel like sport management canbenefit from turning that assumption of stability into an empirical and conceptual puzzle. This research could be particularlyhelpful in furthering knowledge about regional or even international expansion and adoption.

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