Examining institutional work that perpetuates abuse in sport organizations

•Organizational structures and practices can harbor and perpetuate abuse.•Internal discipline and obscured investigations protected abusers and leaders.•Responses to abuse legitimized by valorizing leaders, silencing victims, and collusion.•Stakeholders and administrators assumed legitimacy of structures and leaders.•Legitimized organizational practices and structures harbored and perpetuated abuse.In this research, the author sought to understand how organizational practices that harbor and, ultimately, perpetuate abuse become legitimized. The authors drew from the tenets of institutional work to understand how institutional structures were created and legitimized to allow abuse to perpetuate within sport organizations. In examining the sexual abuse scandals of Penn State University, Baylor University, and Michigan State University, the authors found that university administrators and stakeholders obscured reporting and investigative processes, enacted internal discipline structures that were uncompliant from formal regulations, valorized the perpetrators and university leadership, silenced victims, and engaged in collusion. The authors theorized these actions as legitimacy work designed to legitimize the universities’ management of abuse. In effect, these actions contributed to the harboring and perpetuation of abuse. The implications for the study and management of abuse in sport are discussed.