Conscious capitalism and sport: Exploring higher purpose in a professional sport organization

•Employees of a sport organization struggled describing why the organization exists.•Leaders did not state an organizational purpose and employee perceptions differed.•Enhancing stakeholders’ quality of life was the most prominently espoused purpose.•Pursuing excellence and giving back to the community were also espoused purposes.The higher purpose of a professional sport organization has been an elusive concept, with both sport organizational scholars and leaders seemingly ambiguous in their definitions of why such organizations exist (Newman, 2014; Zeigler, 2007). In contrast, management researchers (Sisodia et al., 2014) provided evidence that organizational leaders’ communication of an organization’s higher purpose profoundly benefits organizational performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a qualitative, descriptive case study of a single professional sport organization, whereby 13 participant leaders and employees espouse their organization’s higher purpose. Data including interviews, observation of organizational artifacts, and an analysis of organizational documents were analyzed by creating typologies based upon Mackey and Sisodia’s (2013) Conscious Capitalism framework that defines four types of higher purpose (i.e., The Good, The Beautiful, The True, The Heroic). Participants espoused several sources of higher purpose that related to The Good, The Beautiful, and The Heroic, and did not espouse any source of higher purpose related to The True. Moreover, participants espoused no definitive statement of the organization’s higher purpose and each participant’s espoused higher purpose varied. These findings suggest that leaders and scholars alike have an opportunity to collectively reflect upon and define the purpose of a professional sport organization.