Racial Differences in the Involuntary Dismissal of Sport Executives

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 20: Race, Migration, and Work

Abstract

We theorize how market processes and race interact to affect the odds of a supposedly goal-directed organization dismissing head coaches. Using data on 346 NCAA Division I men's basketball teams for the five-season period from 2015 through 2020, we find that schools are less likely to dismiss White coaches whose tenures range from about 2 to about 8 years (i.e. the establishing phase of their tenure), and they are less likely to dismiss White coaches when men’s basketball composes a smaller percentage of overall athletic expenditures on men’s sports. Effectively, we show that when market processes fail, either because of uncertainty about future performance or a lack of investments, racially minoritized head coaches are disproportionately vulnerable to dismissal.

Authors

• Scott V. Savage, University of Houston

• Ryan Seebruck, University of Arizona