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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.