Research on institutional logics surveys systems of cultural elements (values, beliefs, and normative expectations) by which people, groups, and organizations make sense of and evaluate their everyday activities, and organize those activities in time and space. Although there were scattered mentions of this concept before 1990, this literature really began with the 1991 publication of a theory piece by Roger Friedland and Robert Alford. Since that time, it has become a large and diverse area of organizational research. Several books and thousands of papers and book chapters have been published on this topic, addressing institutional logics in sites as different as climate change proceedings of the United Nations, local banks in the United States, and business groups in Taiwan. Several intellectual precursors to institutional logics provide a detailed explanation of the concept and the theory surrounding it. These literatures developed over time within the broader framework of theory and empirical work in sociology, political science, and anthropology. Papers published in ten major sociology and management journals in the United States and Europe (between 1990 and 2015) provide analysis and help to identify trends in theoretical development and empirical findings. Evaluting these trends suggest three gentle corrections and potentially useful extensions to the literature help to guide future research: (1) limiting the definition of institutional logic to cultural-cognitive phenomena, rather than including material phenomena; (2) recognizing both “cold” (purely rational) cognition and “hot” (emotion-laden) cognition; and (3) developing and testing a theory (or multiple related theories), meaning a logically interconnected set of propositions concerning a delimited set of social phenomena, derived from assumptions about essential facts (axioms), that details causal mechanisms and yields empirically testable (falsifiable) hypotheses, by being more consistent about how we use concepts in theoretical statements; assessing the reliability and validity of our empirical measures; and conducting meta-analyses of the many inductive studies that have been published, to develop deductive theories.

Elite cultural fields are often not diverse. Existing studies have examined how marginalized cultural producers are actively discriminated against or excluded from positions of prestige, but less is known about how ethnoracial inequality affects the evaluative processes used to assess products in fields of cultural production. This article analyzes 120 in-depth interviews with critically-recognized chefs in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area and 1,380 Michelin restaurant reviews to uncover the system of insidious racial inequality that shapes evaluation in the American fine dining field. I find that there are three logics of evaluation—of (1) technique, (2) creativity, and (3) authenticity—that are differentially enacted for distinct ethnoracial categories of restaurants in the field. I show how these different, racialized evaluative processes result in the systematic devaluation of culinary products categorically associated with non-whiteness, what I call Ethnic restaurants, and disproportionate consecration of products associated with whiteness, which I term Classic and Flexible restaurants. I bring the race/ethnicity and sociology of culture literatures together to illuminate the ways in which inequality infiltrates the logics that organize systems of value in fields of cultural production.

*Abstract: *We survey research on institutional logics, which are systems of cultural elements (values, beliefs, and normative expectations) by which people, groups, and organizations make sense of and evaluate their everyday activities, and organize those activities in time and space. Although there were scattered mentions of this concept before 1990, this literature really began with the 1991 publication of a theory piece by Roger Friedland and Robert Alford. Over the past twenty years, it has become a large and diverse area of organizational research. Several books and thousands of papers and book chapters have been published on this topic, addressing institutional logics in sites as different as climate change proceedings of the United Nations, local banks in the United States, and business groups in Taiwan. Next, we review this literature, beginning with a detailed explanation of the concept and the theory surrounding it. To show how this literature developed over time within the broader framework of theory and empirical work in sociology, political science, and anthropology, we evaluate several intellectual precursors to institutional logics. We then sample papers published in ten major sociology and management journals in the United States and Europe between 1990 and 2015, and analyze this sample of papers to identify trends in theoretical development and empirical findings. After we detail these trends, we conclude by suggesting three gentle corrections and potentially useful extensions to this literature to guide future research: (1) limiting the definition of institutional logic to cultural-cognitive phenomena, rather than including material phenomena; (2) recognizing both “cold” (purely rational) cognition and “hot” (emotion-laden) cognition; and (3) developing and testing a theory (or multiple related theories), meaning a logically interconnected set of propositions concerning a delimited set of social phenomena, derived from assumptions about essential facts (axioms), that details causal mechanisms and yields empirically testable (falsifiable) hypotheses, by being more consistent about how we use concepts in theoretical statements; assessing the reliability and validity of our empirical measures; and conducting meta-analyses of the many inductive studies that have been published, to develop deductive theories.

This article considers how American colleges and universities responded to rapid legal change around Title IX immediately following the 2011 release of the Office for Civil Rights’ Dear Colleague Letter. By analyzing the content of 250 campus sexual harassment policies, this article finds that contrary to the predictions of the employment discrimination literature, which suggests that the largest, most visible institutions in a field are the most likely to embed markers of symbolic compliance in their formal policies, small baccalaureate colleges are more likely to include references to the law in their formal documents than their research university peers do. To understand this intriguing finding, the article then analyzes 15 interviews with campus administrators at research universities and baccalaureate colleges to uncover the distinct logics of symbolic compliance and student concerns that differentially inform how actors at different kinds of institutions inhabit their roles and endogenously interpret new Title IX regulations in their formal policies and campus practices. In doing so, this article illuminates the ways in which processes of legal endogeneity differ across institution types within the broader field of higher education.