Do Italians Really Do It Better? Evidence of Migrant Pay Disparities in the Top Italian Football League

• Author: Antonio Giangreco,William Legeais,Edoardo Della Torre,Jacob Vakkayil
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12136
• Published date: 01 March 2018

Do Italians Really Do It Better? Evidence of

Migrant Pay Disparities in the Top Italian

Football League

EDOARDO DELLA TORRE,

1,2

ANTONIO GIANGRECO,

2,3

WILLIAM LEGEAIS

2

and JACOB VAKKAYIL

2,3

1

Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

2

IESEG School o f Management, Lille, Fra nce

3

LEM-CNRS (UMR 9221), Lille, France

This study contributes to research on migrant pay disparities by analysingthe impact of players’domestic/foreign

status on performance-based pay offered to professional footballers, to understand if foreign players benefit from a

preferential labour market. We used information from publicly available data of 275 footballers who played for

two consecutive seasons in the Italian league Serie A. We found that the relationship between previous and current

performance was partially mediated by the current salary. This result reinforced earlier findings on the pay-

performance relationship, where seasonal performance is particularly relevant. Moreover, our results show that

pay discrimination does not indicate a straightforward (dis)advantage for one group, but presents a more complex

picture. We have examined possible underlying reasons for these disparities and offered suggestions for further

research. We conclude by discussing how clubs and managers could consider incentives to strengthen pay-

performance relationships by being sensitive to the complex influence of players’origins.

Keywords: performance; pay; migrant pay disparity; football; Serie A

Introduction

The study of athletesand team performance is particularly

relevant forunderstanding disparity issuesassociated with

rewards distribution. Sport is a labour-intensive industry,

and human capital is, therefore, crucial for organisational

outcomes (Lechner and Gudmundsson, 2012). Team

sports, football (soccer) in particular, focus on individual

abilities in the pursuit of a successful performance (Kern

and Süssmuth, 2005; Carmichael et al., 2011; Tiedemann

et al., 2011).

Clubs within the European top leagues focus their

attention, not only on the domestic, but also on the

international market to acquire outstanding talent. In a

world of global mobility it should be noted that for our

study the player’s nationality (by birth or immigration)

was what established domestic status. Top league clubs

compete for hiring the best footballplayers in a globalised

market that is characterised by a very high degree of

mobility (Kesenne, 2007; Littlewood et al., 2011). The

competitionfor talent is especially the case with European

players as they can be transferred freely within the

European Union (EU). In fact, the 1995 Bosman ruling

allows EU players to move between c lubs at the end of

their contracts, without a transfer fee, and as a result, the

number of foreign players has increased in the top five

European leagues (Simmons, 1997; McCutcheon, 2002;

Menke, 2014). As Littl ewood et al. (2014) analysedtrends

in the recruitment of non-indigenous players over the

2005–2009 period in the top five European leagues and

found that the Ital ian Serie A had a cumulative percent age

of 33.4% of non-indigenous players during theperiod and

only the German Bundesliga had more non-indigenous

than indigenous players. During the 2013–2014 season,

the proportion of foreign players in the Italian top league

Serie A was 53%, second only to the English Premier

League, which was comprised of more than 60% of

foreign players (CIES, 2014). While top clubs within the

league tend to recruit foreign superstars, there is also a

tradition of attracting young, promising talents from

Correspondence: Antonio Giangreco, IESEG School of Management

(LEM-CNRS UMR 9221), 3, Rue de la Digue - 59800 Lille, France,

Tel: +33 (0)320 545892. E-mail a.giangreco@ieseg.fr

European Management Review, Vol. 15, 121–136, (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12136

©2017 European Academy of Management

around the world, especially from South America and

more recently, from Africa. The resultant team diversity

has not always translated into positive effects on

performance (Maderer et al., 2014), and thus the

globalisationof the labour market in football has notbeen

unequivocally welcomed. This has often generated a

passionate public debate regarding the proportion of

international p layers and their p otential negat ive effect

on the grooming of domestic talents, especially in the

English Premier League and the Italian Serie A. Among

the experts advocating for the protection of domestic

players, the president of the Italian Football Federation

(FIGC) was recently called out for using

inappropriate expressions that gained worldwide press

coverage (The Guardian, 2014) and is an illustration of

these controversies.

The above debates have also focused on the pay levels

of footballers which seem to be affected by their status as

either domestic or foreign players. Football media

regularly highlight evidence showing that foreign players

earn more than their domestic counterparts –the ten

highest paid footballers in Europe over the 2013–2014

season provides a poignant example. Apart from the

English forward Wayne Rooney playing in the English

Premier League, the remaining nine top-paid players do

not play for their countries of origin (This Is Money,

2014). Considerable numbers of foreign players have

brought discrimination issues to the fore. For example,

racial discrimination in European football leagues has been

highlighted repeatedly, both in terms of fan behaviour and

institutionalized barriers (Bradbury, 2013; Kilvington,

2013; Cleland and Cashmore, 2014; Dixon et al., 2016).

However, over the years, many scholars have investigated

player discrimination on multiple fronts using various

indicators, and have obtained results both affirming and

negating the existence of discrimination (Reilly and Witt,

1995; Szymanski, 2000, Pedace, 2008; Frick, 2008; Gallo

et al., 2013; Bullough and Mills, 2014; Posso et al., 2016).

Yet, most studies have not focused on salary and the

relationship between pay and performance as the crux for

evaluating disparities. In this paper, we attempt to examine

whether such discrimination exists in the context of the

Italian Serie A, and if so, how it affects the pay-

performance relationship within the specific context of

Italian football. Thus, this paper contributes to the sport

management literature on migrant pay disparities by

addressing the following specific research question:

How does player-origin impact the pay-performance

model as applicable to players in the Italian Serie A?

To answer the above question, we analysed data taken

from two consecutive seasons, 2012–2013 and 2013–

2014, for 275 professional footballers who played in the

Serie A, one that has received little scholarly attention

(Barros and Rossi, 2014). Given the emphasis on

performance, and the high level of internationalisation of

the players that characterise Italian football clubs, this

context allowed us to offer new evidence about how the

relationship between pay and performance varies based

on the player’s origin (domestic versus foreign). To

achieve this we created a concept of the pay-performance

relationship that incorporated the special nature of

consistent performance within football. The rest of this

paper has the following structure. We describe the

theoretical framework and present the literature we

reviewed that was used to develop the key hypotheses

tested in the empirical section of the paper. The research

context –theItalian football league Serie A –isexplained,

followed by our chosen methods and the results of our

analysis. After this, we discuss our findings and suggest

further contributions and managerial implications for the

sports industry.

Theory, model and hypotheses

One of the prominent ways to understand discrimination

is to link it to considerations of equity and rewards.

Managers, and those responsible for remuneration within

the football environment, are often influenced by

competing factors that demand compromises and

priorities (Carlsson-Wall, Kraus and Messner, 2016).

Nevertheless, at a basic level, it seems straightforward to

assume that higher performances should be associated

with higher rewards. In order for pay discrimination to

be absent, a player’s performance must be tightlycoupled

with their rewards. If this relationship holds true, then

there should be no pay discrimination found between

players based on theircountry of origin. Therefore, in this

section, we first present a partial mediation model that we

used to analyse the relationships between pay and

performance in the current research setting. Then, we

introduce this paper’scoretopic–migrant pay disparities

–and apply it to the above-mentioned model of

performance-based pay. This is done by checking for the

moderation effect of the player’s origin (domestic or

foreign) on the relationship between past performance

and current salary. Figure 1 illustrates our theoretical

model as describ ed below.

Partial mediation model of performance

The conceptualisation of performance-based pay cannot

be reduced to a simple performance-to-pay connection

due to three important factors. First, performance-based

rewards are closely related to past performances and they

should adequately reflect actual achievements. In such

reward systems, incentives are offered to employees, and

depending on their achieved output (Stiroh, 2007) the

sense of justice and fairness can be strengthened. At the

organisational level, these systems are likely to ensure

122 E. Della Torre et al.

©2017 European Academy of Management