Decision-Making Biases and Human Capital Employment: An Investigation on Italian Soccer Clubs

The research study aims to improve knowledge about biases in managers’ decision-making processes, investigating the context of the soccer (football) industry and observing whether discrimination factors impact managers’ decision-making about players’ employment within professional soccer clubs. Using the population of the Top Italian Soccer League clubs, we design a research framework and conduct an empirical analysis to investigate if managers' decisions on footballers’ salaries are affected by discrimination based on the status of foreign/domestic players or black/white players, taking in consideration the correlation between footballers’ salaries and their performance. The results suggest that managers of professional football clubs apply a discrimination strategy, which sometimes affects their decision-making. Results provide practical implications on the types of discrimination errors committed by the management of big and small soccer clubs. Our results' theoretical and managerial implications and the issue of the extendibility of the findings to non-sport organizations are discussed.