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// Purpose:\ud This paper aims to examine two important issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholarship. First, the study problematises CSR as a form of self-regulation. Second, the research explores how CSR strategies can enable firms to recognise and internalise their externalities while preserving shareholder value.\ud \ud // Design/methodology/approach:\ud This study uses a tinged shareholder model to understand the interactions between an organisation’s CSR approach and the effect of relevant externalities on its CSR outcomes. In doing this, the case study qualitative methodology is adopted, relying on data from one Fidelity Bank, Nigeria.\ud \ud // Findings:\ud By articulating a tripodal thematic model – governance of externalities in the economy, governance of externalities in the social system and governance of externalities in the environment, this paper demonstrates how an effective combination of these themes triggers the emergence of a robust CSR culture in an organisation.\ud \ud // Research limitations/implications:\ud This research advances the understanding of the implication of internalising externalities in the CSR literature in a relatively under-researched context – Nigeria.\ud \ud // Originality/value:\ud The data of this study allows to present a governance model that will enable managers to focus on their overarching objective of shareholder value without the challenges of pursuing multiple and sometimes conflicting goals that typically create negative impacts to non-shareholding stakeholders.

The Conservative-led coalition government announced the abolition of the Audit Commission in 2010. Following on, the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 set out the new local audit regime. The purpose of this report to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee is to provide an update regarding the impact of this reform on audit and inspection for local government in England. This is to inform post-legislative scrutiny evaluation scheduled by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for early 2020, and broader reviews of audit in the public and private sector that are ongoing. This report was produced through extensive documentation review and interviews with relevant parties as part of Professor Laurence Ferry’s Parliamentary Academic Fellowship 2018/19. The main finding of this report is summarised as follows, “Public audit should, and should be seen to, serve the public interest. Public audit is not just another professional service. The audit and inspection system is not broken in terms of what it does, but the question is whether it does the right thing. Currently, for local government, it is known what local authorities have spent (financial stewardship), but not what local government got for it (Value for Money (VfM) – economy, efficiency and effectiveness), nor whether it has contributed towards fairness in society (equity). This needs to be addressed.” (Ferry, 2019) Underpinning this main finding are seven themes. These are: post-legislative scrutiny/evaluation of change; fragmentation; auditor independence; audit scope; inspection and service improvement; audit market competition and fees; and implications for accountability and democracy of the new regime. It is recommended that the main finding and themes are considered as part of any review. An executive summary and full report are provided.

I welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee Inquiry on the Financial Sustainability of Local Authorities. This reply draws on my personal senior level experience and recent published academic work on financial sustainability, accountability and transparency in central and local government. Overall, the main focus of my response concerns accountability, financial performance and position, and structural and strategic arrangements. The scope of the response is confined to England, and it should be noted that there are some important differences in arrangements for other parts of the UK.

I welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) Local Public Accounts Committees (LPACs) Discussion Paper. This reply draws on my personal senior level experience and recent published academic work on financial sustainability, accountability and transparency in central and local government. Overall, the main focus of my response concerns how LPACs can be operationalised. The scope of the response is confined to England, and it should be noted that there are some important differences in arrangements for other parts of the UK. Firstly, my response highlights some context and previous evidence I submitted to Parliament on this area with online links that include my published work. Secondly, my response addresses the specific questions raised in the consultation paper.

Although the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the European Union (EU) remains uncertain in early 2018, it is clear that Brexit will have a monumental impact on public services, including English local government. The scale of the challenge that councils face is far too great to set out within a short debate piece for PMM, but we have sketched out some of the key implications below.

We welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on the Financial Sustainability of the NHS. This reply draws on recent published academic work, senior level personal experience of public service management and accounting practices, and response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Long-Term Sustainability of the NHS (Ferry and Gebreiter, 2016). \ud \ud The National Audit Office (NAO) (2016a) has recently repeated its view that financial problems are endemic in the NHS and the situation is not sustainable, and that while there has been effort to stabilise the system by the Department of Health, NHS England and NHS Improvement they have not demonstrated balanced resources and value for money. \ud \ud We concur with the view of the NAO on the current financial situation and so rather than repeat any of these messages the main focus of our response concerns whether accountability arrangements for sustainability of the NHS are 'fit for purpose', especially given ongoing resource pressures (Ham et al., 2015) and structural fragmentation (NAO, 2014, 2015a, 2016b, 2016c).

Data transparency and structural reforms are changing the nature of accountability in public services across the developed world, and English local government is no exception. Various central government initiatives since 2010 have increased the number of mechanisms through which councils can be held accountable, in line with a promise to improve ‘downwards’ accountability to citizens. However, these mechanisms are unlikely to be any more robust than their predecessors in improving this relationship. Instead, the reforms have actually strengthened ‘upwards’ accountability to central government for financial management, and sought (albeit largely unsuccessfully) to make local public bodies more responsive ‘horizontally’ to potential competitors in the public services marketplace. Indeed, since they are likely to result in greater outsourcing and privatisation of public services, the reforms can be seen as part of a wider neoliberal agenda that is contributing to ‘depoliticisation’ and a situation where policy decisions are taken increasingly by non-state or apolitical actors, to the detriment of democracy and public accountability.

I welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the Financial Sustainability of Local Authorities. This reply draws on my personal senior level experience and recent published academic work on financial sustainability, accountability and transparency in central and local government. Overall, the main focus of my response concerns the need to have a broader monitoring regime of local government sustainability that takes account of a ‘Whole System Approach’, beyond merely adherence to financial conformance and/or service performance by embracing risks concerning governance arrangements and cultural specificities of local authorities (Ahrens and Ferry, 2015; Ferry, Eckersley and Zakaria, 2015; Ferry, Coombs and Eckersley, 2017).

A gap exists in understanding the role of accountability (including audit and performance management) and transparency arrangements for different local public service bodies in the context of austerity. To address the gap the National Audit Office (NAO) is developing an evaluative framework to inform its value for money work on the financial sustainability of local public service bodies in England. To support this work, this comparative report looks at the interaction between accountability and transparency arrangements and austerity for local public services in England including local government, fire and rescue, police, and healthcare. The report found considerable variations in current arrangements and as a result considerable scope for potential improvements.

We welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Kerslake Review of Her Majesty’s Treasury. This reply draws on our recent published academic work on governing and budgeting in public services and senior level personal experience of both central government and local government accounting practices. The focus of our response is that there are three main interconnected activities for central government governing and budgeting practices. These are the spending review, budget, and accountability and transparency arrangements, and it is important that they are not treated in isolation from one another. First, the spending review sets out a framework for income and expenditure levels over the medium term as part of multi-year planning (Ferry and Eckersley, 2011). The Conservative government’s spending review after 2015, like its forerunners by the Coalition government 2010-2015 and New Labour government 1997-2010, is considered to provide a stable framework within which the government can plan, construct and implement (in other words ‘constrain’) the annual budget. This veneer of stability espoused by the spending review has afforded an external legitimation to decision making, whether in a period of growth or recession.

I welcome the request to submit written evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee response and consultation regarding Brexit. My response is specifically concerned with the policy area of local government. This reply draws on my recent published academic work on governing and budgeting in public services and senior level personal experience in both central and local government. Local authorities had significant challenges prior to Brexit but undoubtedly now following the referendum there is a need for increased scrutiny, if not a fundamental review, of local government. This is because local government will face a big policy, financial and service impact, along with significant political implications, from Brexit. Scrutiny may be partly undertaken by the European Scrutiny Committee, but mostly shared with other committees that will have a more specific interest in such issues. It is therefore important that the linkages between committees for the flow of information are in place. In my opinion a fundamental review of local government will be necessary, and this could be along the lines of something approaching the Layfield Committee in the 1970s with local government having a seat at the decision making table to voice concerns around power, capacity and local freedoms (Ferry, 2016a).

I welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Communities and Local Government Inquiry on Commissioners and Local Authorities. This reply draws on my personal senior level experience and recent published academic work on financial sustainability, accountability and transparency in central and local government. Overall, the main focus of my response concerns how the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) monitors the performance and governance arrangements of local authorities. With regards to historical context, it is important to note that external inspections and interventions are not a ‘new’ phenomenon for local government. Indeed, such processes at least date back to the early 19th century during the genesis of modern local government. In more contemporary times, in the 1970’s following serious maladministration and corruption in local government from the infamous Poulson scandal there was notably the Redcliff-Maud Committee and Salmon Commission that considered in some detail conduct and scrutiny arrangements for local government and then broader public services, and later in the 1980’s the Widdecombe Committee addressed politicisation concerns. All of these inquiries led to changes in codes of conduct, and from the 1990’s onwards these were supplemented with further developments not only in codes of conduct but also in corporate governance (Ferry and Funnell, 2014). In addition, throughout the 1970’s, there was an increasing call for value for money and a better measure of ‘performance’ as a complement to ‘conformance’ concerns, which among other things culminated in the establishment of the Audit Commission in 1982 and subsequent increase in value for money auditing practices (Campbell-Smith, 2008).

International audience; In order to improve the safety of nuclear power plant, loss-of-coolant accident experiments areimplemented in research reactor. In this framework, we develop an optical pyrometry device to measuresurface temperature (700-1200°C) of Zircaloy cladding without contact. The whole set-up of thesimplified device (under air, without radiation) and the measurement procedure including data treatmentbased on bichromatic pyrometry are presented, as well as results for various temperature levels.Temperature retrieval based on the hypothesis of emissivity ratio equal to a constant, is scanned over alarge wavelength range. A constant surface temperature is obtained on the spectral range ofmeasurement, confirming the relevancy of emissivity hypothesis. Differences between this non-contacttemperature measurement and a complementary thermocouple temperature measurement are alsodiscussed.

We welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Inquiry into Government Accounts. This reply draws on recent published academic work and senior level personal experience of both central government and local government accounting practices. The main focus of our response is that progress has been made and continues to be made with government accounting, but the culture has to further change to embrace the full benefits of accrual accounting. This undoubtedly has to involve financial literacy becoming a norm for politicians and civil servants alike rather than an add-on, a specific skill, a nice to have or even a tick box to promotion. For this to happen involves a more rigorous continuation of building institutional capacity and capability, and further recognition on the importance of accounting for good governance.

I welcome this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Procedure Committee’s inquiry on Scrutiny of the Government’s Supply Estimates. This reply draws on my recent published academic work on budgeting and governance in public services and senior level personal experience of both central government and local government accounting practices. My response takes account of that there has already been written evidence submitted to this inquiry on comparative contexts (Wehner), international best practice (OECD) and pragmatic improvements (Heald). I do not aim to repeat these messages per se, and instead focus more specifically on one main theme and derive a number of points accordingly.

Although excessive transparency and accountability demands can have a counterproductive effect on organisational performance (Bovens, 2005), longstanding hierarchical accountability structures to ensure financial conformance in English local government continue to endure. Interestingly however, the previously top-down regime for performance accountability in English local government has been replaced by bottom-up mechanisms such as greater transparency and a more open market for public services. Using the framework developed by Hood (2010), this paper will show how such reforms mean that transparency and accountability are moving from being ‘matching parts’ to an ‘awkward couple’, and how this has significant implications for public services.

International audience; The Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR) is a high performance Material Testing Reactor under construction in southern France (CEA/Cadarache research centre), that will carry out experimental irradiations for Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) and fuel vendors, utilities, safety organizations and research institutes. Therefore CEA is developing a set of test devices that will be operational for the start-up of the reactor or few years later. These experimental hosting systems will have to fulfil experimental needs concerning current NPP technologies (GEN II-III) and future reactors (GEN IV) as well. Experimental programs could be related to either fuel basis properties acquisition, mastering of margins or improvement of fuel products (clad and pellet), in term of performance, safety, maximum burn up, innovative materials or extension of validation domain of fuel performance codes.Then the present paper describes the main experimental hosting systems currently under design The MADISON device will be available at the JHR start up, and will allow testing the comparative behaviour of several instrumented fuel rods (from 1 up to 8 rods, of up to 60 cm fissile stack height) under NPP normal operating conditions (no clad failure expected). The ADELINE device will be available for the JHR start up, and will allow testing a single experimental rod up to its operating limits. The fuel rod will be tested under conditions that correspond to off-normal situations with possible occurrence of a clad failure. The first version so called ADELINE power ramps will focus on the clad failure occurrence during one of these abnormal situations.The LORELEI device will be available few years after the reactor start up and will allow testing a single rod under accidental situation that may lead to fuel damage. It will be able to reproduce all sequences of a LOCA-type transient, including the re-irradiation, the loss of coolant and the quenching phases, on a separate effect approach.In-core and in reflector material test devices are presented as well, corresponding to large ranges of irradiation conditions, in terms of temperature, neutron flux and neutron spectra. A special attention focuses on the improvement of the thermal stability and gradients in the interest zones of irradiated samples. Some specific devices are described such as equipments designed to the qualification of reactor pressure vessel steels (OCCITANE test device), to the studies of creep-swelling of structural materials (MICA test device) or to the study of the stress corrosion cracking assisted by irradiation phenomena (CLOE test device a corrosion loop with an accurate water chemistry monitoring for PWR or BWR requirement).

International audience; One of the main experimental equipment under construction within the Jules Horowitz Reactor isthe LORELEI (Light water One Rod Equipment for LOCA Experimental Investigation). The aim ofthis test device is to study the thermomechanical behavior of the cladding and the fuel rod in order todetermine the radiological consequences in the case of a Large Break LOCA (Loss-Of-Coolant Accident)accident. In order to design appropriately this device it is important to simulate its behaviorin normal operation or in incidental and accidental situations by using a thermal-hydraulic two-phaseflow software. In this paper, we present two different numerical tests corresponding to the two mainworking conditions of the LORELEI device. The first test simulates the working condition of there-irradiation phase, when the device is filled with water and the fuel rod cooled in a natural convectionloop. This test is thought to provide temperature profiles and velocities in the thermosiphoncomponent, both in single and two phase regime, and to determine the power threshold needed tolimits the thermosiphon working conditions. The second test, consecutive to the re-irradiation phase,reproduces the LOCA sequence with the device in a gas environment (steam, helium and hydrogen).For this case, where high temperatures occur, a new dedicated radiative heat transfer module isintroduced. The objective of the simulation is to obtain representative thermal maps of all significativecomponents from the beginning of the LOCA sequence up to the high temperature plateau. Weperform CATHARE-2 computations and compare the results with CFD corresponding simulations.

International audience; Experiments on nuclear fuels and materials in MTRs are a mandatory step for supporting their characterization and qualification before introduction at industrial scale in power reactors. They are the most often carried out in irradiation loops and capsules embarking a lot of instrumentation, either on-line or by integration. Besides measurement of local irradiation conditions (fast and thermal neutron flux, coolant temperature and pressure, stress applied to experimental load etc.), behavior of sample is monitored thanks to specific sensors measuring on-line important parameters for models and codes. However it presents a lot of constraints such as miniaturization, robustness, adapted measurement range with requested accuracy, negligible drift, materials compatibility etc. which can cause technical issues for long duration experiments. Some of these issues can be overcome by equipping with lines either the sample (internal free volume…) or the surrounding connected volumes (coolant pipe, gas gap…). Their role is to collect and route the fluids to specific out-of-pile measurement means which monitor by on-line and delayed techniques specific chemical elements and isotopes released by the sample: fission products, fissile material, activation or corrosion isotopes or molecules, either in normal conditions (high demanding conditions, power transients, innovative coolant chemistry, first barrier loss…) or during safety tests with sample damage (loss of coolant, power injection…). This paper presents the interest of such measurements for supporting the development process of nuclear fuels and materials. Relevant design data for implementation on experimental samples are given. Analysis equipment recommended to be installed in the Fission Product Laboratory and the Chemistry Laboratory of the Jules Horowitz MTR, for activity and for atoms counting, are presented. Such laboratories are underlined as a key service offered by a modern multipurpose irradiation infrastructure.