Summary dismissals tend to be rather costly, so that one aims for improved performances in return. This holds in particular, if the decision to sack a manager is implemented prior to the expiration of her/his contract. ( 2014) argue, that football managers closely resemble managers in other branches of the economy with respect to personal characteristics, such as age and the capabilities to cope with stress, media attention and a large group of stakeholders.Īssuming that ‘management matters’, or, at least, that decision-makers, such as the supervisory board, suppose that ‘management matters’, one of the key decisions is the hiring and firing of managers (Ward et al. In contrast, Anderson and Sally ( 2013) argue that this influence is non-negligible, as leadership appears to matter for history, in general, and for business, in particular.

Kuper and Szymanski ( 2010) question the influence of managers on the performance of professional football teams. An element in football that has clear analogies both with business and economics is the ongoing debate about the effects of management on the performance of firms. Results of football matches, for example, provide a straightforward and objective measure of performance (Ter Weel 2011). In this respect, the high frequency of data obtained from controlled events is of particular interest. Kahn ( 2000) and Szymanski ( 2003), for example, argue that professional sports offer interesting data to analyze labor market phenomena. Professional sports, in general, and professional football, in particular, have proven to be a fruitful soil for scientific research.

The great interest in football is not restricted to fans seeking entertainment. Furthermore, top clubs have an enormous global fan base. Both clubs and national associations employ top-class managers from all around the globe to coach their squads. Top players now move to the football leagues of Australia, Japan and the United States, and, more recently, also to the league of the People’s Republic of China. In other continents, interest has increased in the past decades. In Europe and Latin-America, football has entertained crowds for more than one century.

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