Athletes in boardrooms: Evidence from the world

Abstract

This study examines the relation between the athletic experience of board directors and corporate outcomes. We predict that athletes' attributes, such as physical fitness, mental resilience, leadership, and team-working skills, enhance their monitoring role. Using a large sample from 71 countries, we find that athletic experience is associated with better firm performance. The benefits are more pronounced when the experience is of team sports and confrontational sports, and for firms experiencing financial crisis. The results remain consistent when we instrument the athletic experience of directors with the number of Olympic medals won and Olympic sports participated in by the country in question at the previous Olympic Games.

“After All, No One Is Superhuman Here”: An Analysis of the Perceived Effects of Managerial Athleticism

“…The study, using a panel of S&P 1500 companies, offered evidence that the effect would exist and would be positive. Similarly, Dong et al (2019) used a large global panel of 94,496 firm-year observations from 14,328 firms, finding that the previous athletic experience of board directors (i.e., having been a professional or collegiate level athlete), had a positive effect on firm performance. The effect was found to be more significant when a board director had competed in team or confrontational sports.…”

“…Physically active leaders would then have an elevated level of physical resilience, that is, they would be less likely to become physically exhausted due to intensifying job demands and be able to prevent and withstand various health stressors (Lovelace et al 2007). Secondly, physical exercise is seen to provide various psychological benefits or affective resources, such as positive affect, self-esteem, and mental resilience (Calderwood et al 2021;Dong et al 2019; see also Goldsby et al 2019;Goldsby et al 2021). Physical exercise could then help, for example, leaders to manage pressure and to combat the harmful effects of work-related stress by serving as a buffer against those ill effects (Burton et al 2012).…”

“…Physical exercise could then help, for example, leaders to manage pressure and to combat the harmful effects of work-related stress by serving as a buffer against those ill effects (Burton et al 2012). Thirdly, physical exercise is associated with enhanced cognitive resources, such as attention, memory, and reaction time (see Calderwood et al 2021;Limbach and Sonnenburg 2015;Dong et al 2019). As a result, leaders who exercise regularly might benefit from, for example, improved information processing, error recognition, executive function, and decision-making.…”

“…Previous research literature seems then to be, at least to some extent, reductionist in nature. First, the more optimistic quantitative research (e.g., Limbach and Sonnenburg 2015;Dong et al 2019) overlooks the negatively perceived effects of corporate athletes on the organization and society, such as the excessive idealization of the fit body and the implications of that idealization. Second, the critical leadership studies related to managerial athleticism (e.g., Thanem 2013;Johansson et al 2017;Johansson and Edwards 2021;Bardon et al 2021) appear to highlight extreme cases, where a leader's relationship with exercising is more obsessively than harmoniously passionate (see Clohessy et al 2020), and consequently, for the most part, neglect to acknowledge the possible benefits of balanced and healthy exercise for the leader and the organization.…”

“…The literature on physically active leaders appears to be divided into two research streams. The first is quantitatively oriented and seeks to find positive connections between physical activity and managerial performance: That stream has already produced interesting preliminary results (e.g., McDowell-Larsen et al 2002;Limbach and Sonnenburg 2015;Burton et al 2012;Dong et al 2019). The second is qualitatively oriented and approaches the theme more critically, for example, by scrutinizing masculine connotations and heroic individualism as they relate to managerial athleticism (e.g., Meriläinen et al 2015;Johansson et al 2017;Ghin 2019;Johansson and Edwards 2021;Bardon et al 2021).…”