Search results

This study aims to examine the association between national economic prosperity (measured by per capita gross national income – GNI) and the acquisition of football workers (indicated by number of amateur footballers, football officials and professional footballers) and predict football performances (specified by qualifications at continental football championships) based on per capita GNI and football workers.

Archival data of 203 national football teams were utilized based on continental football championship records before 2014. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to build various models to ascertain their predictive values. Economically prosperous nations are those with a per capita GNI of more than US$10,000, and unprosperous nations are those with per capita GNI of less than US$10,000.

The analysis indicated that per capita GNI was significantly and positively associated with the acquisition of football workers – but not predictive of football performance. Rather football officials and professionals emerged to be the key predictors of football performance and not per capita GNI. The final model predicted 73.1 and 74.2 per cent of performance and non-performance, respectively, of national football teams correctly.

The findings were largely restricted to quantitative archival data for the last continental championships. However, future research may benefit from using qualitative interviews, questionnaires and or ethnographic studies of players, teams and or managers.

The results revealed that economic prosperity positively influences the acquisition of football resources (here – in football workers). Specifically, targeted production of football workers, such as the acquisition of a large number of effective professional footballers and officials, can boost football performance – and not merely economic prosperity.

Actual football-specific human capital (and not general population) was used in predicting continental football qualifications – a factor uncommon in such studies.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to evaluate the association between human resources and qualification for the 2017 Gold Cup, and second, to examine if human resources could predict qualification for the 2017 Gold Cup.

Guided by four competitive advantage (CA) theories related to the human resources, the study utilized archival data of 35 male Gold Cup national football teams. The dependent variable was qualifications for 2017 Gold Cup and the independent variables were football-specific human capital measured by ranked number of football amateurs, professionals and officials. Statistical analysis was performed using Kendell τ statistic and binary logistic regression (BLR).

Qualification for the Gold Cup tournament and all human resources were positively and statistically associated (officials (0.493, p<0.01), amateurs (0.464, p<0.01) and professionals (0.624, p<0.01)), and BLR model (Negelkerke R²) explained 55.8 percent of the variance of human resources.

The research focused exclusively on football-specific human capital and not alternative sources of CA such as economy power, political stability and/or national football popularity amongst others.

Human resources are a valuable source of CA which requires long-term strategy geared toward training, development and promotion of talent. Superior football team performance is directly proportional to talented players.

The study was unique in two ways. First, it made clear the positive significance of human resources as a source of CA. Second, it highlighted the distinction between professional and amateur footballers – a factor uncommon in similar studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of first-mover advantage (FMA) on revenue generation capacity (RGC) of US college football programmes during the 2008 global financial crisis.

The study used archival data analysed quantitatively using non-parametric regression in the form of binary logistic regression. The study was then framed and interpreted by the resource-dependence theory.

FMA was positively and statistically associated with donations, branding, media rights and ticket revenues, but not win–loss records. The binary logistic regression model was correctly classified at 82.1 per cent of the variance and indicated that branding and ticket revenues were mostly associated with FMA.

The study was delimited to public college football programmes in the USA during the 2008 global financial crisis.

The findings indicated that despite the 2008 global financial crisis, FMA was positively associated with RGC but not win–loss records.

The study was pioneering in evaluating the effects of FMA as a source of competitive advantage in college football programmes during the challenging time of the 2008 global financial crisis.

This study aims to predict the determinants of net income of 101 US university football programs.

Guided by stakeholder theory, financial capacity model and resource dependency theory, the dependent variable was net income (indicated as profit or loss) and independent variables were measured as the number of women and men’s team sports, average home attendances, win–loss records, conference ranking, endowment funds and age of football programs. Statistical analysis was performed using Kendell tau and binary logistic regression (BLR).

Net income was positively and statistically associated with home attendance, win–loss record, conference rankings and endowment funds, but not number of women’s sports, age of football program and number of men’s sports teams. The BLR indicated that home attendance was the best predictor of net income.

The research was delimited to 101 Football Bowl Subdivision football programs from public universities.

The findings indicate that home attendance and conference rankings had the highest association with net income, but the former was the best predictor of net income and not football tradition nor number of sports teams.

The study was pioneering in the predictive evaluation of the possible determinants of loss or profitability in college football programs.

This paper aims to predict a college football team’s competitiveness using physical resources, human resources and organizational resources.

Guided by the resource-based theory, the study used archival data of 101 college football teams. The dependent variable was competitiveness (indicated by win-loss records), the independent variables were physical resources (operationalized as home attendance and total revenues), human resources (measured as coaches’ salary and coaches’ experience) and organizational resources (specified as conference rankings and the number of sports). Kendall Tau correlation and binary logistic regression were used to examine the associative and predictive competitive advantages.

The binary logistic regression model showed an overall percentage predictive correctness of 71.3%, with a Negelkerke R² of 41.1% of the variance of all predictors – with coaches’ experience, total revenues and home attendance being the best predictors of generating competitive advantages that produced superior win-loss records.

The research focused exclusively on physical, organizational and human resources as sources of competitive advantage and not physiological and/or psychological variables.

College football teams aspiring to be competitive may benefit from this study by applying a three-fold strategy of hiring well-paid high performing and experienced coaches who can increase attendance and revenues.

The study was unique in two ways – one, it made clear the positive significance of coaches’ experience as a source of competitive advantage, and second, it highlighted the catalytic effects of revenues and attendance in fueling competitiveness.

Guided by the resource-based theory, the purpose of this study was to predict the role of football talent in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) rankings of the men’s national football teams in the Copa America zone.

The study used archival data of Copa American national football teams. The dependent variable was FIFA rankings, and the independent variables were football talent (measured by the stocks of amateur footballers, professional footballers and football officials). Statistical analysis was performed using Kendall tau statistic and binary logistic regression.

The binary logistic regression results indicated that FIFA rankings were statistically and significantly associated with the stock of football officials and professional footballers – but not amateur footballers. The predictive model explained 80 per cent of the variance.

The study focused exclusively on the stock of football talent in each nation, and not alternative determinants of national football team competitiveness as economic power and quality of professional football leagues, among others.

The stocks of professional footballers and football officials are valuable sources of competitive advantage (CA) in national football team rankings.

The study highlighted the uniqueness and distinctiveness of a nation possessing large stocks of professional footballers which can boost the CA and rankings of Copa American national football teams.

This paper aims to investigate how predictions of football league standings and efficiency measures of teams, obtained through frontier estimation technique, evolve compared to actual results.

The study is based on data from the Turkish first division football league. Historical data for five seasons, from 2011 to 2016, are used to compare weekly estimates to de facto results. Data envelopment analysis efficiency measures are used to estimate team performances. After each week, a data envelopment analysis is run using available data until then, and final team standings are estimated via computed efficiencies. Estimations are improved by using a data envelopment analysis model that incorporates expert knowledge about football.

Results indicate that deductions can be made about the league’s future progress. Model incorporating expert knowledge tends to estimate the performance better. Although the prediction accuracy starts out low in early stages, it improves as the season advances. Scatter of individual teams’ performances show fluxional behaviour, which attracts studying the impact of uncontrollable factors such as refereeing.

While all previous studies focus on season performance, this study handles the problem as a combination of weekly performance and how it converges to reality. By tracking weekly performance, managers get a chance to confront their weak performance indicators and achieve higher ranking by improving on these inefficiencies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between national diversity and team performance. Research on US teams involved in a task of low interdependence (baseball) is replicated with a Japanese sample to investigate possible cross‐national differences. The paper also presents a new quantitative measure of diversity.

This study uses quantitative research based on archival data. Regression modeling is applied to professional sports data from Japan. National diversity of teams is operationalized using a new approach to Blau's Index.

A negative relationship was found between national diversity and team performance in Japan. No significant results were found for age diversity. The results for national diversity are in contrast to research conducted on similar teams in the USA.

The findings provide evidence of cross‐national differences between US and Japanese teams. Findings are also directly applicable to managers in the growing field of international sports management and sports business.

Globalization has resulted in the internationalization of the professional sports industry. This paper is one of the first international studies of professional sports teams that span the East‐West divide, to provide insights on international team performances. Findings from this cross‐national comparison of US and Japanese teams contribute to organizational research by reinforcing the need to consider national context in diversity research. Educators will find that use of professional sports allows students to easily relate to the findings of the study. Managers are offered direct evidence that team dynamics related to diversity are different between US and Japanese teams.

Over recent decades, knowledge transfer processes and knowledge-intensive organizations have been increasingly investigated from several perspectives. Knowledge translation activated by knowledge-intensive organizations is supported by several factors, among which intangible assets play a significant role. Our research mainly investigates the relationship between the knowledge owned by knowledge workers in source organizations and the process of its translation to recipient organizations. Specifically, this paper aims at analyzing knowledge translation and organizational performance in the football industry, uncovering both the role of professional football players' skills transfer and the determinants of achieving positive performance at the organizational level.

A quantitative method is adopted, using both bivariate linear regression analysis and network analysis. Using key aspects of Nakauchi et al.'s (2007) knowledge transfer framework, intra-organizational dynamics are analyzed based on measurements of the performance of professional football players before and after transferring from one club (the source organization) to another (the recipient organization).

Our research results are mainly intended to show the factors that influence knowledge translation in the light of team performance improvement. Our empirical analysis shows the need for the coexistence of a combination of factors, especially the quality of the source and recipient organizations and of the relationship between them, to achieve the transferability of professional football players' capabilities and performance.

The academic community, practitioners and policymakers can draw on the theoretical and practical advances made by the findings to address knowledge translation issues with an improved understanding of its factors and determinants.

Despite some limitations to the study, we identify the factors, determinants and contexts that facilitate the transfer of knowledge and specialist knowledge and thus contribute to the successful operation of contemporary organizations. Moreover, the results of our analysis are applicable to all economic sectors.

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the lives of people and businesses around the world in different ways. France, Spain, Italy and the UK are among the worst affected countries by this pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare different corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities taken by the clubs and player of the major football leagues of these four countries to develop a more comprehensive model of intervention.

This paper has analyzed the initiatives taken by these football clubs and players to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence among the stakeholders and compared them with the existing CSR and humanitarian models. A case study approach has been used to collect and analyze data related to the CSR activities taken by the players and club management. Official websites of the clubs, newspaper and journal articles were among the major sources used to collect data for the paper.

Football clubs and players of the four major leagues have raised funds through different campaigns and delivered foods and essential medical supplies to the communities and hospitals to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health issues and domestic violence within their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have provided guidance to their followers using social and television media to improve their physical and mental health during the pandemic. Online competitions, quizzes or virtual hangouts have also been used by the players to engage the stakeholders on a frequent basis. Football clubs have also initiated campaigns to raise awareness within the community on available medical services for the victims of domestic violence and also provided them with shelter, food, medical, legal and online counseling services.

Football clubs and players of the major leagues were always at the forefront to help the communities and hospitals to address issues related to mental health problems, financial vulnerabilities and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this paper could help and guide other entities in designing a more comprehensive model of CSR interventions during pandemics or crisis situations to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence within their communities.