Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer

Abstract

It is difficult to test the prediction that future career prospects create implicit effort incentives because researchers cannot randomly "assign" career prospects to economic agents. To overcome this challenge, we use data from professional soccer, where employees of the same club face different external career opportunities depending on their nationality. We test whether the career prospect of being selected to a Euro Cup national team affects players' pre-Cup performances, using nationals of countries that did not participate in the Euro Cup as a control group. We find that the Euro Cup career prospect has positive effects on the performances of players with intermediate chances of being selected to their national team, but negative effects on the performances of players whose selection is very probable. Our findings have implications for the incentive effects of within-firm promotions and of external career opportunities.

Using Sports Data to Advance Management Research: A Review and a Guide for Future Studies

“…Research on sports contexts has generated insights about unethical behavior, which is defined as workplace behaviors that violate generally accepted norms (Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006). Empirical studies have explored such unethical behavior by looking at soccer players receiving yellow and red cards (Bartling, Brandes, & Schunk, 2015;Greve et al, 2021;Kilduff et al, 2016;Miklós-Thal & Ullrich, 2016), dojo members of martial arts violating "physicality norms" (Cole, 2015), NCAA members violating rules about recruiting and practice (Davis, Cox, & Baucus, 2021;Stern, 1981), ice hockey players receiving penalties for norm violations (Bushman & Wells, 1998;Kakkar, Sivanathan, & Gobel, 2020;Kelly & McCarthy, 1979), and horse-racing jockeys and members of competing neighborhoods being involved in violence, provoking injuries, and receiving penalties (Operti, Lampronti, & Sgourev, 2020). Some of these studies have also explored how practicing sports can help alleviate unethical and deviant behavior in everyday life (Trulson, 1986).…”

“…In addition to contributing to the advancement of extant management theories, sports contexts can also provide ways to examine phenomena that management research has not fully leveraged (Moliterno et al, 2021). A prominent example is inequality.…”

How success breeds success

“…Finally, a rational momentum could exist in games with incomplete information whereby players learn that they are better and increase their effort level as a consequence. Models of dynamic contests with incomplete information are complex and only a few studies (Konrad (2009), Münster (2009), Ederer (2010), Kubitz (2015), Miklós‐Thal and Ullrich (2016)) have provided theoretical results on such models. One of the key challenges is that the incompleteness of information generates signaling motives.…”

“…This possible mechanism calls for the investigation of dynamic contests as games of incomplete information. Until now, only a few specific cases of dynamic contests have been solved in a setting with incomplete information (Konrad (2009), Münster (2009), Ederer (2010), Kubitz (2015), Miklós‐Thal and Ullrich (2016)). The unknown heterogeneity of players adds a layer of complexity to the game: it not only has to be solved by backward induction starting from the end, but the equilibrium strategy at the end of the contest depends on the Bayesian beliefs formed from the equilibrium strategies and outcomes in all the previous rounds.…”

Contracts, pay and performance in the sport of kings: Evidence from horse racing

“…This suggests that a well‐judged salary payment scheme, with appropriate worker selection, can deliver benefits over a scheme based on appearance fees. Miklos and Ullrich (2016) find shirking to be a problem among Bundesliga players prior to the 2008 UEFA European Championship Finals, with players regularly picked to represent their national team reducing effort levels, possibly to avoid injury or fatigue. However, the opposite effect is found when the chance of selection for the national team is not guaranteed.…”