Do managers matter? Management practices in post-COVID Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has a persistent productivity gap to the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland, as with the rest of the UK and Europe, also has a long tail of low productivity SMEs and micro businesses. An important contributor to a firm’s productivity is its management. Managers make decisions regarding the allocation of labour and capital that affect whether a firm is at or below its production possibility frontier. In this study, we focus on the managerial practices of businesses in Northern Ireland. We explore the correlates of good management practices and examine the consequences of good management practices for firm performance, innovation, exporting intensity, and working from home. Our study is the first to conduct a largescale survey of management practices in Northern Ireland. To allow comparability, this survey was largely based on the Management and Expectations Survey run by the Office for National Statistics. We included additional questions to capture the extent of government support received, digitalisation within the firm, leadership training for managers, and trading links. We received 272 responses, and our sample was representative of the population in terms of firm size and business sector.