Industry hierarchy in team sport industries, team tactics and competitive advantage: the empty goal option in league handball

ABSTRACT

Research question

The paper asks to what extent team tactics qualify as internal sources of competitive advantage in team sport industries. Team tactics are complex routines for situated action, which require highly skilled actors to perform them. However, in an industry structure facilitating a highly unequal allocation of athletic talent, the potential of tactical routines to create competitive advantage is limited and incentives to exploit new routine options are dulled.

Research methods

The paper addresses the research question on the basis of a quantitative case study on empty goal tactics in German professional league handball.

Results and findings

There is evidence for a strong quality hierarchy between teams. Superior teams perform significantly better in standard tactic situations. A new tactical option is used primarily to resort to standard routines. New routines are avoided when incompatible with already established routines and do not promise a competitive advantage.

Implications

In a highly hierarchical team sports industry, the key resource heterogeneity, which creates competitive advantage, remains athletic talent. Creating new tactical options will not suffice to increase competitive balance. Teams have to develop key upstream higher-level routines before team tactics become relevant.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational routines
• competitive balance
• team tactics
• resource-based view

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Wikipedia, which does not cite any specific sources for these figures, the average team budget for 2018/19 season equaled €4.6 million whilst the standard deviation was €1.9 million. The top budget for THW Kiel (€9.5 million) was almost the eightfold of the budget of the smallest team Die Eulen Ludwigshafen (€1.2 million) (Wikipedia, 2021).