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The pandemic has seen a big drop in childcare provision with thousands of providers leaving the Ofsted register. Jo Stephenson speaks to early years groups about what must change to stem the decline

Large private companies continue to play an increasing role in the provision of children's home and fostering placements. Jo Stephenson analyses what the data says about the quality of large providers

A change in inspection procedures has helped contribute to a rise in the proportion of childcare providers on non-domestic premises that are rated good or outstanding, latest Ofsted figures show

Purpose
Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, this study aims to analyze solution providers' strategic capabilities that facilitate above-average returns.


Design/methodology/approach
The study applies a qualitative comparative case method. In addition to an extensive set of secondary data, the results are based on interviews with 35 executives from nine leading industrial solution providers, their strategic customers and suppliers. The analyzed solution providers were identified based on quantitative survey data.


Findings
By observing six distinctive resources and three strategic business processes, the present study identifies seven strategic capabilities that occur in different phases of solution development and deployment: fleet management capability, technology-development capability, mergers and acquisitions capability, value quantifying capability, project management capability, supplier network management capability and value co-creation capability.


Research limitations/implications
The study develops a generic model for the strategic capabilities of servitization. Application of the developed model to different contexts would further validate and enhance it.


Practical implications
Managers can use the developed model to benchmark, identify, build and manage solution providers' strategic capabilities and associated practices.


Originality/value
The study develops a valuable conceptual model based on the comparative case data. Case firms were selected for the study based on a representative quantitative data set. The results were verified and triangulated with external data.

To reduce the chances of policy failures, policy makers need information about the effects of policies. Sometimes, policy makers can rely on agents who already possess the information. Often, the information does not exist yet. This raises two questions. First, how much resources should be devoted to the production of information? Second, should information be produced by a profit- maximizing firm (a private consultant) or by someone who has an interest in policy outcomes (a political adviser)? This paper shows that policy makers may prefer hiring a political adviser for two reasons. First, in contrast to a private consultant, a political adviser need not be fully compensated for exerting effort. Second, a political adviser with moderate preferences produces information of a higher expected quality than a private consultant is induced to do by the optimal monetary incentive scheme. The cost of hiring a political adviser is that she may distort policy decisions by manipulating information. As long as a political adviser is not too biassed, the policy maker prefers consulting a political adviser to consulting a private consultant, even if a political adviser and a private consultant are equally costly. Competition among political advisers is shown to reduce the willingness of political advisers to produce information.

This paper studies the selection of information collecting agents by policy makers in the light of two agency problems. First, it is often hard to ascertain how much effort agents have put in acquiring information. Second, when agents have an interest in the policy outcome, they may manipulate information. We show that unbiased advisers put highest effort in collecting information. Eliminating manipulation of information, however, requires that the preferences of the policy maker and the adviser be aligned. Therefore, policy makers appoint advisers with preferences that are less extreme than their own.

This study examines how algorithmic processing affects structures and practices in sports journalism in Germany. A multi-level perspective is used to determine which strategies data providers, software providers, and media outlets use to develop automated reporting, which compiles perspectives across the entire line of news production. The results of 11 in-depth interviews show that non-journalistic actors are vital partners in the news production process, as all actors work together in data handling, training, and software development. Moreover, automation can generate additional content such as match and historical coverage to help address shortfalls in capacity. However, given the business case for automation, amateur football (soccer) is currently the only viable candidate for its use. Many actors involved in the process argue that automated content is an added value for their readers, but claim that content quality has to be put before quantity. This means that some media outlets edit automated articles to increase the quality of their sports journalism, but that this is done only on a small scale. Media outlets do not perceive their roles to be changing, but see automation as a helpful tool that complements their work; a few use automatically created articles as a baseline for in-depth reporting. Moreover, the so-called 'meta-writer' has not become a reality yet, as data-processing and news writing are still kept separate. This article sheds new light on the use of automation in the sports beat, highlighting the growing role of non-journalistic actors in the news production process.

Related Content: Ameringer and Liebert (PAR March/April 2017)
Related Content: Liebert and Ameringer (PAR November/December 2013)