Logic Work: Understanding the Institutional Work of Logic Creation and Maintenance

There are two dominant but not connected streams in institutional theory: logics and work. Recently, scholars from both traditions have called for an attempt at integrating these two perspectives. We attempt to answer this call by examining how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) created and maintained its version of amateurism: what we call logic work. We find that there were three processes: translation work (changing the British notion of amateurism to a US ethos), communicating work (the failed attempt of the Sanity Codes) and maintenance work (putting the logic in people, place, and policy). Drawing on the recent historical institutionalism as our methodological approach, we provide the account of how the NCAA created its amateur logic. We then end, by offering insights into what this tells us about institutional logics and institutional work.