Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue of Management Decision and discuss the key question “Should sport be taken seriously?”. Design/methodology/approach – The themes of the special issue are discussed and each paper is introduced. Findings – Sport...

Purpose – This paper seeks to evaluate the impact of the country‐of‐origin (COO) effects on the consumption patterns of “made in” Nigeria Guinness as opposed to Guinness “owned by” Ireland. It aims to trace the trend of Nigerian Guinness in the international market – taking...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to consider the versatility of management theory by testing it in a non‐management context, in this case sport in general and the Rugby World Cup in particular. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a theoretical discussion of performance and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how a multiple criteria decision‐making method, the analytic network process (ANP) is applied to help Taiwanese TV companies to effectively select optimal televised sportscasters for the Olympic Games. Design/methodology/approach – After...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain that corporate citizenship refers to the specific activities that an organisation engages in to meet social obligations, and which has become an issue of growing importance within the business community. A key area in academic literature...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the applicability of the concept of benchmarking as a research tool for furthering understanding of the management of élite sport systems. Design/methodology/approach – The research used semi‐structured interviews and documentary analysis to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the notion of “symbolic purchase” which has long been documented in the management and marketing literature. In particular, self‐congruity theory has been examined in various domains of consumer behavior. However, little attention has...

Purpose – This paper aims to study the stock market reaction to sporting results of European listed football clubs. Specifically, it tries to examine the impact of the sporting results on the stock market valuation in terms of abnormal returns and trading volume around the dates of matches....

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the effects of both salary dispersion and incentive pay on team performance using data complied from the National Football League over the years 2000‐2007. Design/methodology/approach – The authors consider the effect of pay structure on both in terms...