The context of sport as theoretical leverage: advancing institutional theory through race and organizational behavior analyses

Purpose This paper argues that sport offers a rich and underutilized context for advancing institutional analyses of race and organizational behavior. Sport, as an empirical context, is highly visible, emotionally charged and a socially embedded institution where internal and external stakeholders' investments illuminate the contradictions, power dynamics and racialized structures that shape organizational behavior. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon our own work (Keaton and Macaulay, 2025; Macaulay and Keaton, 2024), we argue that sport is a meaningful context for advancing management theory because of the visibility, irrationality and emotionality tied across stakeholder and social levels. Findings Sport data provide access to emotional, irrational and socially visible phenomena that reveal the interplay of race, legitimacy and power in organizational processes. Moreover, by centering race as a foundational element rather than a peripheral variable, our work highlights the potential of sport as an empirical context for sharpening and expanding institutional theory; thus, laying the groundwork for a critical institutionalism that reintegrates society and structural inequalities into analyses of institutional theory. Originality/value Across these projects (Keaton and Macaulay, 2025; Macaulay and Keaton, 2024), the context of sport did not merely provide an illustrative setting; it demonstrated that institutional theory is rife for centering how racial meanings/issues are stabilized, contested and strategically mobilized by external and internal actors. In doing so, these studies demonstrate how sport as an empirical context is an underutilized arena for sharpening race and organizational behavior theories.