Original purpose for creating the dataset The Management and Expectations Survey aims to collect information about the management practices of businesses in the UK and their expectations for the future, as previous research found a positive relationship between management practices and business performance, including productivity and profitability. What the data describes The data captures the answers of businesses across a range of management practices. It is a long-form dataset, where each row represents a business uniquely identified as a distinct Reporting Unit (RU) in the ONS systems. In addition to characteristics of the businesses such as region, employment size, SIC 2007 code, birth date, age and foreign ownership, the dataset contains the Management and Expectations Survey questions. From the answers on management practices, scores for each question have been computed, which combined following the scoring guidance form the management practices section scores. In turn, the four section scores combined form the overall management score. Significant changes between waves ONS conducted the Management Practices Survey (MPS) as a pilot survey in 2016. The survey collected data on management practices of businesses in the manufacturing sector in Great Britain. In 2017, ONS conducted the first wave of the Management and Expectations Survey (MES), which included businesses from across a wider range of industries in Great Britain. It also included a broader set of metrics on management practices and asked about businesses’ expectations for the near future for the first time. At the end of 2020, ONS conducted the most recent survey wave of the MES. In addition to the usual management practices and expectations questions for both 2019 and 2020, it also asked about specific adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sampling MPS: The MPS was a pilot survey, sent to about 1,000 firms in the British manufacturing sector. It received about 700 useable responses and has 2015 as the reference year. MES 2017: The survey sampled 25,000 businesses registered in Great Britain, garnering around 8,000 responses. The survey reference year is 2016. MES 2020: The survey sampled 50,000 businesses registered in Great Britain, from which over 12,000 responded. The survey reference years are 2019 and 2020. Data Collection The data for the last wave was collected between November 2020 and March 2021, across two national lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Expectations variables The variables measuring firms' expectations about the future in 2019 and 2020 are not currently available in the dataset. They will be added to the dataset in future.