SMEs conscious leadership and conscious culture: the mediating role of higher purpose

The collective impact of SMEs is relevant in the global economy, therefore understanding how they can approach to conscious business practices can make the difference to our already wounded society. Drawing on Competing values framework (CVF) and the Conscious Capitalism (CC) approach, this work empirically examines how a higher purpose (HP) mediates the relationship between SMEs' conscious leadership (CL) and conscious culture (CC). This study, based on an online survey completed by owners and managers of 115 Mexican SMEs and using structural equation modeling to analyze the responses, reveals that CL positively affects SMEs' CC and that HP partially mediates that relationship. This article contributes to the literature by joining the academic discussion to better understand the dynamics of three of the tenets of conscious capitalism (CL, HP and CC). It does so by proposing and empirically testing a model supported on CVF and argues that SMEs with an organizational clan culture may be more susceptible to adopt the conscious business (CB) mindset and permeate it throughout the organization.