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This study aims to examine whether the adoption of the International Integrated Reporting Council’s Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRC Framework) influences the extent of forward-looking disclosures provided by reporters.

This study captures forward-looking disclosures of Australian and New Zealand-based reporters by analysing integrated and annual reports over a period of 10 years from 2010 to 2019 using a machine learning algorithm. This study uses signalling theory to frame the analysis.

This study finds that the adoption of the IIRC Framework has a significant positive impact on the extent of forward-looking disclosures provided by reporting entities. The primary evidence suggests that while listing status alone negatively influences the extent of forward-looking disclosures, the additional analysis reveals that the acceptance of the IIRC Framework by listed entities is positively associated with an increase in forward-looking information. These results remain valid when subjected to a variety of robustness (alternative variables and country fixed effect) and endogeneity (system generalised method of moments and entropy balancing estimations) tests.

The findings have practical implications as regulatory agencies (including stock exchanges and standard setters), seeking to promote greater forward-looking disclosures, may want to encourage the adoption of the IIRC Framework.

The IIRC’s Framework promotes greater forward-looking disclosures benefiting stakeholders who gain a better understanding of the reporters’ future risks and opportunities (including social, economic and environmental risks) and how these are being managed/addressed.

This study provides novel evidence by highlighting the role played by the IIRC Framework in promoting forward-looking disclosures.

Prior research shows that companies that achieve high performance excel at certain financial objectives. This chapter addresses the question: Do companies that excel at these financial performance objectives also excel in integrated reporting and sustainability reporting?

We compare a sample of high performance companies (HPC) with a sample of companies that purport to support integrated reporting, and a sample that purport to support sustainability reporting. Our hypotheses are that HPC will equal or exceed the integrated reporting and sustainability reporting practices shown by International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) companies and US companies will be less at these practices than non-US companies.

Our findings indicate that IIRC companies and GRI companies generally do not meet the high financial performance measures of the HPC. Based on an integrated reporting and sustainability reporting matrix, we show that HPC exhibit equal performance on the practices of sustainability and integrated reporting compared to GRI companies, but both HPC and GRI are lower on these practices than IIRC companies. Also, US companies disclose less information in sustainability reports and integrated reports as compared to non-US companies. Overall, all three groups fall short of full compliance with standards of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting.

This chapter provides evidence as to the financial performance and the current state of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting among HPC, GRI, and IIRC companies. This chapter highlights the global need for a generally accepted set of standards for sustainability and integrated reporting practices.

Drawing on Suchman’s conception of cognitive legitimacy and Boswell’s account of the political functions of expert knowledge, this paper aims to study the due process followed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) prior to the publication of the first version of the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRF). Specifically, the author analyses the lobbying strategies used in the comment letters sent by a subset of lobbyists, “the experts”, represented by accounting bodies and firms, regulators and academics.

From both a form- and meaning-oriented analysis, this paper focuses on how the experts resorted to the functions of knowledge when they took part in the IIRF’s public consultation. The author first carries out a quantitative content analysis of the responses to the 2013 Consultation Draft submitted by those constituents considered as accounting expert lobbyists. Then, the author analyse how these actors framed their comments under expert knowledge to legitimise the IIRC, the IIRF and the accounting profession itself.

The findings suggest that the expert groups welcomed the opportunity, not simply to legitimise the IIRC through their democratic support, but to provide a technocratic settlement that ensures the due process is based on the mobilisation of expert knowledge as a legitimate source. By drawing on the cognitive legitimacy of expert lobbyists, the IIRC drew on the political functions of expert knowledge to reduce uncertainty and gain stability.

Analysis of the lobbying strategies used by the accounting experts whose position could make a difference and receive more attention from the IIRC makes this contribution of particular interest, especially since the first version of the IIRF sought to guide disclosure and sustainable business practices around the world.

Experts as political actors play a legitimising role since they are capable of producing relevant knowledge that, due to its nature and scope, certainly affects policymaking and sustainable development.

This research provides a sociopolitical perspective to comprehend how some lobbying strategies, in this case, of expert actors, contribute to legitimising a standard-setter body and its endeavours in the context of voluntary standards.

A goal of integrated reporting (IR) under the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)’s leadership is to provide clearly written, comprehensible and accessible information. In light of this objective, the purpose of this paper is to explore the readability and accessibility of integrated reports, an issue magnified by the IIRC’s continual commitment to clear and readable report language, and its intention for IR to become the corporate reporting norm.

In a whole text software facilitated analysis, the study utilises readability measures and supplementary measures of reader accessibility in a multi-year analysis of a large sample of global integrated reports sourced from the IIRC examples database.

The findings highlight the low readability of analysed integrated reports and indicate that readability is not improving. The supplementary measures suggest sub-optimal use of visual communication forms and overuse of structural presentation techniques which may contribute to reader accessibility of the analysed reports.

The study extends readability analysis to an emerging corporate reporting phenomenon and its findings contribute to the growing IR literature. The study applies supplementary measures of reader accessibility which advance the methods available to assess the communication efficacy of integrated and other corporate reports.

The analysis of the readability and accessibility of integrated reports in the study indicates that the IIRC’s goal of clear, comprehensible and accessible reporting is not reflected by reporters’ practices. This has implications for the IIRC, reporting organisations, report readers and regulators.

The study represents the first large-scale analysis of the readability and accessibility of global integrated reports.

The initial rationale for developing integrated reporting included addressing the failures of traditional reporting to address sustainability issues. Subsequently, the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) modified its stated objectives to emphasise integrated thinking and value creation. There has been debate on whether the IIRC’s process for developing its integrated reporting framework was subject to regulatory capture by the accounting profession (Flower, 2015; Adams, 2015; Thomson, 2015). This paper aims to provide additional evidence on the extent to which this regulatory capture occurred, with an update on current developments.

Data from interviews with key participants in the integrated reporting framework’s development and the IIRC’s Council and Working Group meeting minutes were analysed to identify to what extent the change in the IIRC’s focus can be explained by regulatory capture theory.

The findings show that the integrated reporting framework’s development was subject to regulatory capture by accountants. However, the extent of capture was mitigated to some extent by processes adopted in its development. This is consistent with regulatory capture theory.

This paper critically examines the debate on the extent to which the sustainability message has been lost as a result of regulatory capture. It provides an in-depth analysis of the IIRC’s treatment of sustainability which explores the application of regulatory capture theory and examines evidence not considered in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine formal participation in the early phase of the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC’s) standard-setting. The objective of the paper is to shed light on the characteristics of lobbying parties and the determinants of their lobbying behavior toward the IIRC. Additionally, the most important points of contestation regarding the IIRC’s initial proposal for integrated reporting are identified and discussed.

The authors analyze comment letters issued toward the IIRC’s 2011 discussion paper on the basis of a content analysis. The analysis is guided mainly by Sutton’s (1984) rational-choice model of lobbying and by findings from extant financial accounting lobbying research. The analysis of the data is both quantitative and qualitative.

The paper improves the understanding of the political nature of standard-setting in the context of integrated reporting. Among other things, the authors find that comment letters toward the IIRC’s discussion paper are mainly written by large multinational firms (as opposed to small- and medium-sized ones) and by preparers (as opposed to users). The authors also observe active lobbying by sustainability service firms and professional bodies which tend to take a critical position vis-à-vis the discussion paper’s emphasis on investor needs and shareholder value creation. Moreover, the qualitative analysis reveals that respondents voice different concerns regarding, for instance, the scope of audience of integrated reporting, issues of materiality and the relationship between integrated reporting and other existing reporting frameworks.

The analysis is limited to a consideration of the 2011 discussion paper of the IIRC. The IIRC’s more recent and forthcoming proposals will likely provide a basis to extend the paper’s findings and allow investigation of the role of lobbying for the further development of the framework.

The paper is, to the best of the knowledge, the first one to explore lobbying behavior by means of comment letters in the context of integrated reporting.

Integrated thinking is central to the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC’s) integrated reporting (IR) framework, which is in turn is related to a potential resurgence of intellectual capital (IC) reporting. However, it remains unclear how key IR stakeholders understand this concept in theory or practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore how key stakeholders interpret integrated thinking; and how pilot organizations are applying integrated thinking in practice.

The study involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with key IR stakeholders in Australia, including two IR pilot organizations, one professional association, an accounting professional body, an accounting firm and two IIRC officials.

First, the IIRC has not fully defined and articulated the concept of integrated thinking, and there is no shared consensus among practitioners. Second, there is evidence of an evolving understanding of integrated thinking within practice. What remains unclear is how this understanding will develop over time.

Since interviews were conducted with a relatively small sample of participants in Australia, the results may not be generalizable across different contexts. The study emphasizes the need to interpret carefully IR’s potential contribution to organizational practice through either reporting in general, or IC reporting in particular.

Despite the centrality of integrated thinking to IR, there has been limited research to date on the concept. Clarifying what integrated thinking means in practice can improve our understanding of a key IR concept, and can advance our understanding of IR’s potential to improve IC reporting and research.

Motivated by claims that the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IRF) can be used to comply with Directive 2014/95/EU (the EU Directive) on non-financial and diversity disclosure, the purpose of this study is to examine whether companies can comply with corporate reporting laws using de facto standards or frameworks.

The authors adopted an interpretivist approach to research along with current regulatory studies that aim to investigate business compliance with the law using private sector standards. To support the authors’ arguments, publicly available secondary data sources were used, including newsletters, press releases and websites, reports from key players within the accounting profession, public documents issued by the European Commission and data from corporatergister.com.

To become a de facto standard or framework, a private standard-setter requires the support of corporate regulators to mandate it in a specific national jurisdiction. The de facto standard-setter requires a powerful coalition of actors who can influence the policymakers to allow its adoption and diffusion at a national level to become mandated. Without regulatory support, it is difficult for a private and voluntary reporting standard or framework to be adopted and diffused. Moreover, the authors report that the <IRF> preferences stock market capitalism over sustainability because it privileges organisational sustainability over social and environmental sustainability, emphasises value creation over holding organisations accountable for their impact on society and the environment and privileges the entitlements of providers of financial capital over other stakeholders.

The authors question the suitability of the goals of both the <IRF> and the EU Directive during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The planned changes to both need rethinking as we head into uncharted waters. Moreover, the authors believe that the people cannot afford any more reporting façades.

The authors offer a critical analysis of the link between the <IRF> and the EU Directive and how the <IRF> can be used to comply with the EU Directive. By questioning the relevance of the compliance question, the authors advance a critique about the relevance of these and other legal and de facto frameworks, particularly considering the more pressing needs that must be met to address the economic, social and environmental implications of the COVID-19 crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current discussions about the concept of Integrated Reporting (IR) and provides a practical and useful proposal of an instrument that could help to apply the IR concept in corporate practice.

The study uses a deductive normative research approach.

Based on a comprehensive review of international literature and research, the paper argues that a structured presentation of the traditional measure of “value added” in a so-called “value added statement” (VAS) has the potential to serve as a practical and effective reporting instrument for IR. The proposed VAS not only meets the guiding principles of IR but also reports on the monetary effects of different types of capital included in IR and in this way complements and represents the concept of IR very well.

The authors intend to stimulate the academic as well as institutional discussion on how to apply the concept of IR at the corporate level. As the characteristics of the proposed VAS comply well with the guiding principles and concepts developed in the Integrated Reporting Framework project of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and with the ultimate objective of integrated thinking, the study can inform the current considerations within and outside of the IIRC.

The future of IR and the probability of its world-wide application in practice will depend on the development of appropriate reporting tools that incorporate the central ideas of IR, currently no such reporting tools exist. In this paper the authors make an argument for a VAS as a complementing, useful and therefore appropriate reporting tool for IR.

This paper is motivated by the call for feedback by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) from all stakeholders with knowledge of the International Integrated Reporting Framework (<IRF>) and specifically of the enablers, incentives and barriers to its implementation. The paper synthesises insights from contemporary accounting research into integrated reporting (IR) as a general concept and <IR> as espoused by the IIRC in the <IRF> (IIRC, 2013). The authors specifically focus on possible barriers and emphasise the specific issues the authors feel could be rectified to advance the <IRF>, along with the areas that may potentially hinder its wider adoption and implementation.

The paper draws upon and synthesises academic analysis and insights provided in the IR and <IR> academic literature as well as various directives, policy and framework pronouncements.

The flexibility and lack of prescription concerning actual disclosures and metrics in the <IRF> could allow it to be used for compliance, regardless of the other benefits lauded by the IIRC. Thus the authors see forces, both external and internal, driving <IR> adoption, with one prominent example being the European Union Directive on non-financial reporting. Because of the different ways in which IR is understood and enacted, there are numerous theoretical and empirical challenges for academics. The authors paper highlights potential areas for further robust academic research and the need to contribute to <IR> policy and practice.

The paper provides the IIRC, academics, regulators and reporting organisations with insights into current practice and the <IRF>. The authors highlight the need for further development and evidence to help inform improvements both from a policy and a practice perspective. A key limitation of the authors’ work is that the authors draw upon a synthesis of the existing literature which is still in an early stage of development.

The paper provides the IIRC with several insights into the current <IRF> and specifically with the enablers, incentives and barriers to its implementation. Also, it provides academic researchers with a number of important observations and an agenda upon which the authors can build their future research.