“Catch me if you can!” A methodological proposal for capturing institutional logics in social involvement within French professional sports

The creation of dedicated bodies, such as foundations and/or endowment funds, by French professional clubs as a way to implement their social responsibility strategy is a practice in the process of becoming institutionalized. This phenomenon calls into question the role(s) of these dedicated bodies, which is why we draw on the concept of institutional logics (ILs), borrowed from neo-institutional theory, to show how social involvement is being reconfigured in the sector. We have devised an original research design divided into three sequential, embedded studies, based on a multi-method and multi-level approach. The first characterizes the process of hybridization in the sector through four criteria (governance, actions, resources, and evaluation). All these criteria are the starting point for the second study, which points to the emergence of a new model of social involvement in the sector. In a programmatic approach, we describe the third and final step in identifying the ILs underlying the clubs’ dedicated bodies through case studies. Lastly, we discuss the methodological contributions of this article but also its limitations, which invite us to consider research perspectives to capture in a more accurate way the logics of social involvement within the professional sports sector in France.