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The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue of Management Decision and discuss the key question “Should sport be taken seriously?”.

The themes of the special issue are discussed and each paper is introduced.

Sport should be taken seriously because it has a significance beyond the field of play. It has become a commodified activity which creates and consumes wealth and can be used as a context for management research.

Rarely before has sport been taken seriously in a management research context. This guest editorial and the special issue that follows it begin that debate.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship between three concepts: organisations, transformability and the dynamics of strategy. These three concepts together with their interrelationships are central in explaining the life cycle of organisations, their survival and renewal.

The development of this explanation has been based on bringing together a diversity of perspectives. Each perspective provides a horizon of understanding by directing attention in a particular way. The benefits of this approach are that it avoids the pitfalls of one‐dimensionalism. This approach more accurately reflects the multi‐faceted reality within which organisations operate.

Discusses, compares and contextualises the findings and approaches of the papers in this special issue.

The perspectives considered represent a small sample of the diversity that exists. However, this sample as serves a starting‐point in developing a wider, more holistic debate that aims to bring theory and practice together.

The purpose of this paper is to show how one of the biggest phenomena of the twenty‐first century is the internationalisation of professional sports and how premier league football epitomises this. With the influx of foreign players, managers and now owners, European League Football has become big business. This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of the management implications of foreign players in the English Premiership League football – renamed the Barclays Premier League to suit the needs of its major sponsors.

The approach adopted is purely qualitative in nature, evaluating the top Barclays Premier League teams and the impact of globalisation on their reconfigurations since the early 1990s to date. The study draws mainly from a review of the extant literature on sports and management, as well as a critical analysis of media reports.

Globalisation has emerged as a new force that has changed the way corporations are managed. Financial services, retail and information technology firms have all responded to this new wave – and so also has sports. Unfortunately while sports have the potential to teach lessons on management strategy, management researchers seem to have relegated sports to the sociology and psychology disciplines.

The Barclays Premier league football provides a unique environment for management decisions and processes to occur in a range of markets and at varied levels. However, the globalisation of professional sports has received relatively very little attention in the academic literature – especially in the field of business and management.

This paper contributes to the scant literature on the management implications of football by highlighting how globalisation has affected and reconfigured professional sports using the influx of foreign players into the English football league as a point of departure.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which recent changes in the UK's higher education sector are likely to increase the level of competition and change the behaviour of UK higher education institutions.

The paper draws on a conceptual framework developed to understand competitive conditions and behaviours in order to provide an analytical device to guide the narrative of the paper. The paper draws on a number of national and international sources.

It is likely that competition between UK higher education institutions will intensify in the future especially in light of the introduction of student tuition fees and this will lead to further changes in behaviour.

The paper offers an original approach and conceptual basis to make a contribution to a growing debate about the future of the UK higher education sector.

To consider whether the growth in management and entrepreneurship education is driven by (external) demand or (internal) academic supply.

Three key elements of the intellectual context of management and entrepreneurship education are considered: the apparent causal relationship between improved management and economic performance; the privilege afforded to management as an agent of change in the context of globalisation; reforms in the public sector which define problems in terms of management rather than resources.

There is a lack of clarity as to whether the purpose of entrepreneurship education is about promoting higher levels of activity or better recognising entrepreneurial activity.

The paper offers an alternative perspective on entrepreneurship education through an examination of its purpose rather than its form and content.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the diversity of team composition and the outcome enjoyed by those teams in test match cricket by using performance and competitiveness variables.

The paper examines 100 test matches over 13 years played by eight test match‐playing countries. It draws on 12 measures of performance and 12 measures of competitiveness across more than 130 players.

The paper finds that there is a link between diversity and outcome, but it is not always clear as to which direction that relationship lies. Team characteristics are found to be a function of member characteristics and not a simple aggregate.

The findings of the paper are probably not generalisable outside of international test match cricket.

The paper provides evidence that suggests that, in developing sporting teams, consideration must be given as to which activities are more important in delivering outcomes.

The paper adds to the literature on team dynamics in terms of theory and sporting context.

The growth in management education generally, and entrepreneurship education specifically, has occurred at the same time as increasing importance is attached to management both as an activity for academic investigation and as a practical activity in both public and private sectors. This paper argues that the intellectual foundations of this growth are unsupported by a significant volume of evidence and so it is unlikely that the hope for economic outcomes will be achieved. In the specific case of entrepreneurship education, this paper recommends that the tension between prescription and recognition of the activity needs to be resolved by both academics and policy makers before the benefits of education in this area can be realised.

The aim of this paper is to consider the versatility of management theory by testing it in a non‐management context, in this case sport in general and the Rugby World Cup in particular.

The paper develops a theoretical discussion of performance and competitiveness into a conceptual model before using that model to analyse and discuss the causes of success and failure in the Rugby World Cup.

Understanding the outcome of sporting contests is a complex activity. In the examples discussed, success or failure is the product of both the internal characteristics of the contestants and the external conditions of the contest itself. The findings of the research are robust in their reliability and validity.

Originality lies in a number of areas. Theory is used to develop an original conceptual model and it is then tested in an original context. The value of the paper lies as much in the investigations it opens up as in the debates it closes.