Career Ascent, Stagnation, and Decline among Football Managers in Iran: A Grounded Theory Account of Professional Capital and Organizational Conditions

Abstract

This study aimed to develop a grounded theory explanation of career ascent, stagnation, and decline among football managers in Iran by examining how professional capital, organizational conditions, intervening influences, managerial strategies, and career consequences interact across the managerial career trajectory. This qualitative, applied, and developmental study used the systematic grounded theory approach associated with Strauss and Corbin. The study was based on the completed doctoral investigation A Qualitative Analysis of the Snakes and Ladders Pattern in the Career Paths of Football Managers. Fifteen current or former head coaches and technical directors with 10–23 years of professional experience participated. Participants were selected through purposive sampling followed by theoretical sampling until conceptual adequacy was achieved. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews addressing career movement, organizational conditions, appointment and dismissal processes, managerial responses, and career consequences. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed concurrently through open, axial, and selective coding, constant comparison, and analytical memo writing. Coding consistency was additionally examined through independent review of selected transcripts. Analysis yielded 123 nonredundant open codes, 41 subcategories, and 18 main categories. The central phenomenon comprised three dynamic career states: career ascent, career stagnation, and career decline. Career movement was shaped by professional competence capital, professional reputation capital, relational and network capital, and adaptive career agency. Contextual conditions included club governance and executive structure, performance and result orientation, employment and contractual conditions, and football labor-market characteristics. Informal stakeholder influence, authority-responsibility imbalance, and media and supporter pressure operated as intervening conditions. Managers responded through career protection, reputation management, relationship maintenance, professional adaptation, and strategic re-entry. Consequences ranged from strengthened employability and accumulated professional capital to reputational erosion and occupational vulnerability. Football managerial careers in Iran follow a nonlinear and recursive “snakes-and-ladders” pattern in which professional capital interacts continuously with organizational opportunities and constraints, making ascent, stagnation, decline, and recovery contingent on both individual resources and institutional conditions.