The impact of cultural distance on the migration of professional athletes as high-skilled employees

Abstract

Global migration creates both challenges and opportunities for employees and employers. An important issue in international business and human resource management is the integration of employees into a culturally different working industrial environment because focusing on cultural differences, integration, and mitigating culture shock can provide a competitive advantage. Our research examined the global migration involving the Hofstede cultural dimensions in the sports industry, especially in the football transfer market. The paper aims to find a relationship between cultural distance as an expression of cultural differences and international transfers of professional footballers as high-skilled and talented employees. Our study is based on a substantial quantitative examination of processing 34,430 international transfers. Our research question is: What kind of relationship can be detected between cultural distance and the migration of professional footballers? The results of a linear regression model show a significant negative correlation between the number of transfers and cultural distance. However, we believe that the country’s economic performance and professional sports standards or quality are essential in addition to the cultural distance. Therefore, as a next step, the analysis involved both factors in getting a more sophisticated result. The results of the multiple regression model confirm the attitude of professional athletes; besides cultural distance, the impact of other factors (economic and/or professional aspects) is also important. Therefore, we recommend that companies pay close attention to their particularly valuable human resources.