City Research Online

Abstract

PURPOSE
This paper explores how research on association football (also referred to as ‘soccer’ in the US) published in leading management and strategy journals contributes to the advancement of general management theory. By leveraging football as a viable field of scholarly investigation, this study offers an overview of the ways in which it has been employed as a research laboratory within management scholarship and the types of theoretical contributions that have emerged. Finally, it identifies an agenda for future research.

DESIGN / METHODOLOGY / APPROACH
The study adopts a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA Guidelines. Articles were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, searching the keywords “football” and “soccer”, and filtered to include only ABS-ranked journals in management, strategy, organization, and leadership. The final sample consists of 68 articles, published between 1970 and 2025. Rather than focusing on a mere description of the chronological alignment of relevant papers, we applied a coding scheme that extracted, from each article, the central theoretical contribution, the dominant theoretical lens, the level of analysis, and the role of football as an empirical setting for management research.

FINDINGS
We document an increase in football-based research in management journals over recent years, and the significant emergence of strategy, organization, and institutional perspectives, alongside the more established field of sports economics. We clustered the selected literature around four domains: performance and strategy; governance and regulation; leadership and managerial labor; identity, culture, and meaning. Across these domains, association football is used in different ways to support theory testing, extension and refinement, or conceptual development, drawing on unique features of the industry such as performance transparency and data granularity, regulatory density and frequency, and deeply rooted symbolic meaning.

ORIGINALITY
By systematically reviewing football-based research in general management and strategy journals, this study offers an integrated view of how football has been used as an empirical setting for theory advancement. This approach is an alternative to sport management scholarship that typically adapts established theories to address industry-specific research questions within football.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© the authors, 2026. This AAM is provided for your own personal use only. It may not be used for resale, reprinting, systematic distribution, emailing, or for any other commercial purpose without the permission of the publisher.
Publisher Keywords:	association football, PRISMA guidelines, soccer, management research, performance, governance and regulation, leadership, organizational identity, culture, meaning
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Text (Full Text) - Accepted Version
This document is not freely accessible due to copyright restrictions.

Text (Tables) - Accepted Version
This document is not freely accessible due to copyright restrictions.

Text (Appendix A) - Accepted Version
This document is not freely accessible due to copyright restrictions.

Text (Appendix B) - Accepted Version
This document is not freely accessible due to copyright restrictions.

Export

Downloads