Vasco Eiriz

GESTÃO FINANCEIRA E ESTRATÉGIA EM CLUBES DE FUTEBOL. Sabem qual é o título do artigo de abertura do último número da revista Strategic Change (Volume 13, N.º 8, Dezembro de 2004)? Pois bem, nem mais nem menos do que "Strategy and financial management in the football industry" (autoria de Tony Grundy). A situação fiscal dos clubes portugueses não está em debate (já agora, alguém sabe como ficou a coisa?); o que preocupa o autor do artigo são os seguintes tópicos:

• The literatures on strategy and finance have developed very separately, notwithstanding the fact that they have a common economic underpinning. Whilst a number of strategic theorists have looked at how strategic management facilitates the most effective leverage of economic resource, studies of the linkages between strategy and finance literatures are relatively few.
• This appears odd because finance is pivotal in making the resource allocation decision in management, especially in major business investment and divestment decisions and in the financing strategies needed to accomplish this. Both financial management as a discipline and financing strategies also play a role in influencing stakeholder behaviour, which is critical in strategy.
• Rarer still are studies of how strategy, financial management, financial strategies and stakeholders interact. With continuing examples of devastating corporates such as Enron and more recently Parmalat, it would seem surprising that theorists have been relatively disinterested in this important border between these disciplines.
• This paper seeks to make a contribution to our understanding of the topic by focusing on the interesting case of the football industry. Whilst an earlier paper in this journal (Grundy, 2004) dealt with techniques for appraising strategic options to exploit product/market opportunities, financing strategy options warrant separate exploration.