Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Professional football: historical development and economic structure
- 3 Competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome
- 4 The labour and transfer markets
- 5 The contribution of the football manager
- 6 Managerial change and team performance
- 7 The demand for football attendance
- 8 Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting
- 9 Professional football: current issues and future prospects
- List of references
- Index
5 - The contribution of the football manager
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Professional football: historical development and economic structure
- 3 Competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome
- 4 The labour and transfer markets
- 5 The contribution of the football manager
- 6 Managerial change and team performance
- 7 The demand for football attendance
- 8 Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting
- 9 Professional football: current issues and future prospects
- List of references
- Index
Summary
For many years economists have recognised the importance of the manager in the production process. In classical and neoclassical theory, individual firms and consumers are the fundamental building blocks of the market economy. The theoretical distinction between the owners, entrepreneurs and managers of firms tends to be rather blurred, because all are assumed to pursue the same objective of profit maximisation. In Austrian theory the manager is distinct from the entrepreneur who supplies the ideas and spots new and potentially profitable business opportunities, and from the owner or capitalist who advances the finance needed to implement the entrepreneur's ideas. The manager is regarded primarily as an employee, hired to carry out the day-to-day running of the firm (von Mises, 1966; Kirzner, 1973).
In a highly influential contribution Coase (1937) reinvented the theoretical role of the firm, by asking why it is that in a free-market economy, certain transactions take place outside the domain of the market, within centrally planned and hierarchical organisations known as firms. Coase's answer was that for certain types of transaction, the costs of gathering information and negotiating contracts prohibit the use of market mechanisms; instead it is more efficient for such transactions to be planned and co-ordinated consciously. The manager is the individual within the firm who takes responsibility for this co-ordinating function.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economics of Football , pp. 240 - 263Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001