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The purpose of this paper is to critically assess integrated reporting so as to “broaden out” and “open up” dialogue and debate about how accounting and reporting standards might assist or obstruct efforts to foster sustainable business practices.

The authors link current debates about integrated reporting to prior research on the contested politics of social and environmental reporting, and critiques of the dominance of business case framings. The authors introduce research from science and technology studies that seeks to broaden out and open up appraisal methods and engagement processes in ways that highlight divergent framings and politically contentious issues, in an effort to develop empowering designs for sustainability. The authors demonstrate the strong resonance between this work and calls for the development of dialogic/polylogic accountings that take pluralism seriously by addressing constituencies and perspectives currently marginalized in mainstream accounting. The authors draw and build on both literatures to critically reflect on the International Integrated Reporting Council's (IIRC, 2011, 2012a, b, 2013a, b) advocacy of a business case approach to integrated reporting as an innovation that can contribute to sustainability transitions.

The authors argue that integrated reporting, as conceived by the IIRC, provides a very limited and one-sided approach to assessing and reporting on sustainability issues. While the business case framing on which it rests might assist in extending the range of phenomena accounted for in organizational reports, it remains an ideologically closed approach that is more likely to reinforce rather than encourage critical reflection on “business as usual” practices. Recognizing that the meaning and design of integrated reporting are still far from stabilized, the authors also illustrate more enabling possibilities aimed at identifying and engaging diverse socio-political perspectives.

Science and technology studies research on the need to broaden out and open up appraisal methods, together with proposals for dialogic/polylogic accountings, facilitates a critical, nuanced discussion of the value of integrated reporting as a change initiative that might foster transitions to more sustainable business practices.

The authors link ideas and findings from science and technology studies with literature on dialogic/polylogic accountings to engage current debates around the merits of integrated reporting as a change initiative that can contribute to sustainability. This paper advances understanding of the role of accounting in sustainability transitions in three main ways: first, it takes discussion of accounting change beyond the organizational level, where much professional and academic literature is currently focussed, and extends existing critiques of business case approaches to social and environmental reporting; second, it emphasizes the political and power-laden nature of appraisal processes, dimensions that are under-scrutinized in existing accounting literature; and third, it introduces a novel framework that enables evaluation of individual disclosure initiatives such as integrated reporting without losing sight of the big picture of sustainability challenges.

This paper aims to examine the reporting on sustainability and the level of compliance with international best practice, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), aimed at improving communicative value to users.

Using a qualitative approach, comprising interviews with senior managers and analysis of disclosures in annual reports of Thai-listed companies, this paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market setting.

This study finds that sustainability reporting and integrated reporting perspectives of sampling companies are aiming to satisfy information needs to stakeholders and value creation to external users. Sustainability disclosures are related to some aspect of integrated reporting (IR) principles but not all.

The findings of this study are based on the results from interviews and annual reports of five business sectors, and may therefore, not reflect the sustainability reporting practices and/or annual reports of other Thai-listed companies. Also, there is limited reporting on future outlook.

The findings suggest that while sustainability and IR is being adopted very widely, in many countries, there is much variation in reporting practice especially in our emerging country context adopting a “comply or explain” approach.

For the Thai-listed companies, IR systems could be in their early stages and still have long way to go. The results can greatly encourage Thai-listed firms to incorporate integrated information in annual reports based on international standards thus building trust in capital markets and wider society.

The findings contribute to the literature on sustainability reporting and on the level of compliance with international best practice such as GRI by providing empirical analysis of non-financial disclosures within publicly available reporting in Thailand.

There are still many different theoretical approaches and practical interpretations about what an integrated report is. Starting from this premise, the overall purpose of this chapter is to critically analyze the relationship between integrated reporting (IR) and social/sustainability disclosure. Indeed, although some scholars considered IR as a tool to improve the sustainability approach of the companies allowing to disclose more relevant social information, others are more critical about the potentiality of IR to improve social disclosure. Therefore, the general research question is: Is there a natural link between IR and social disclosure (true love) or is the IR a practice to “normalize” the social disclosure and accounting (forced marriage)?

In the attempt to provide a preliminary answer to the research question, the chapter analyzes what is the approach of three categories: (1) academics; (2) soft-regulators; and (3) companies. From the methodological point of view, a mixed method of analysis has been adopted.

From the analysis of the three different points of view, IR can be considered as a “contested concept” because of the heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting interpretations and implementation that are done on this type of report. This leads to relevant theoretical and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why companies assure some of the information found in their integrated reports, possible changes required to existing assurance practices and the motivation for either seeking to expand current technologies of assurance or to maintain the status quo.

The research is exploratory/interpretive. Data are collected from detailed interviews with preparers and assurance experts. Framing theory provides the data analysis framework.

Three broad views on assurance are identified. An expectation management perspective focusses on the role of assurance as a legitimisation tool and requires no changes to existing assurance standards. A value-adding perspective emphasises the role of assurance in improving the usefulness of information being reported to stakeholders and its function as part of a broader corporate governance system. This can evolve into a change-potential outlook in terms of which assurance is used to promote positive organisational change, something which may require the development of new standards/guidelines for assuring integrated reports.

Only preparers and assurance experts are engaged to explore the rationale for seeking to have parts of an integrated report assured. The views of the broader stakeholder community are not taken into account. The study is also limited to a single jurisdiction where integrated reporting practices are relatively well established.

Assurance of non-financial information cannot be understood only in terms of broad drivers such as firm size, environmental impact or listing status. It is inextricably linked with the perceived relevance of integrated (or sustainability) reporting and the value which assurance provides to an organisation and its stakeholders.

The study complements the mainly quantitative research on determinants of assurance of environmental or social disclosures. It is one of the few to provide primary evidence on the reasons for having these types of disclosures assured and how this informs the need for changes to existing assurance practices. The paper is also one of the first to deal with the assurance of environmental or social information in an integrated reporting context.

This study aims to summarise the findings of the perceptions of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and senior executives of South African listed companies on the perceived benefits and implementation challenges as a result of implementing integrated reporting (IR) requirements, as well as motives for preparing an integrated report; it is performed two years into the South African IR regime,. South African-listed companies are among the first in the world to be subject to compliance with IR requirements in terms of stock exchange listing requirements. IR, as a novel and evolutionary step in corporate reporting, along with the influence that integrated thinking and IR principles will have on companies, has been the subject of global debate in recent years.

The research instrument used in the study comprised a self-administered Web-based survey aimed at CEOs and CFOs of all South African listed companies. The survey was validated by a pre-trail and data analysed by a statistician to ensure reliability.

The study revealed that listed companies, in a mandated regulatory regime implemented in a short period with reference to a highly prescriptive draft framework, attach value to the IR process primarily from the perspective of their corporate reputation, investor needs and stakeholder engagement and relations. This strengthens the business case for voluntary IR as a reporting regime. Advancement of corporate reputation appears to be a key motive to compile an integrated report, secondary to compliance as a primary motive. This indicates the perceived corporate legitimising effect of producing an integrated report. Furthermore, managers are more motivated by the legitimising aspect of advancing corporate reputation and stakeholder needs in compiling the integrated report than satisfying investor needs. This results in a disconnect between the perceived audience of the report by managers and the intended audience of the report as providers of capital as envisioned by the IIRC, which should be a matter for future consideration. Better resource allocation decisions and cost reductions are not indicated as an outcome of IR in the study. Furthermore, substantial changes to management information systems, with associated costs, would be required by companies to satisfy the requirements of the report content. The study revealed that the anticipated benefit of a company reconsidering its business model and encouraging sustainable product development is not perceived to be a material outcome in companies that implement IR, nor is assessing economic value creation and strategy considered a key motive for companies to compile an integrated report.

Further validation of the survey by statistical methods in addition to the pre-trial of the survey was not considered viable by the statistician in view of the limited amount of data. This may be viewed as a potential limitation of the study. Statistical analysis must also be interpreted with caution given the limited amount of data available for analysis. Other limitations include the fact that certain industries are too heavily represented instead of there being a mix of industries representing the entire market listed on the JSE, and that a substantial proportion of the companies are large listed companies and Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Constituents. As a result, the results may not be representative of the overall market listed on the JSE.

Managers are more motivated by the legitimising aspect of advancing corporate reputation and stakeholder needs in compiling the integrated report than satisfying investor needs, while the intended audience of the report in the framework is the providers of financial capital. This needs to be considered in the future development of regulations and frameworks. Furthermore, policymakers and regulators should exercise caution in the early stages of IR, when there is still a lack of evidence to support significant short-term changes in reconsidering the business model as well as sustainable product development that could be convincingly attributed to mandatory IR. It is, therefore, critical that policymakers, government and regulators strive towards creating a wider enabling environment to advance sustainable product development and sustainable business models. This can include establishing incentives to encourage the development of sustainable products, or other incentives that serve to align business objectives with national and global objectives and frameworks. Industry bodies can play a significant role in developing universal industry standards in this regard. Consideration should further be given to implementing regulatory mechanisms for advancing and possibly enforcing responsible investment practices as a measure to fully engage business in the critical shift towards sustainable business practices.

The study is significant from a global perspective because IR and integrated thinking form a new and globally developing concept and the potential benefits and expected outcomes from an organisational perspective thereof for companies are currently the subject of continued global debate. This study aims to provide valuable insights into and understanding of the perceived organisational benefits of implementing IR requirements, as well as serves to highlight the challenge areas experienced in South African companies by compliance with IR requirements. The study also contributes towards the debate of motives of managers for producing an integrated report and how this will affect future directions.

This chapter investigates how integrated reporting (IR) can contribute to a better corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation through diffusion and adoption of CSR practices and actually applying the CSR discourse. Based on innovation diffusion theory, we intend to analyse the diffusion and adoption of CSR on the grounds of IR. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that IR does indeed represent a mean of reducing the gaps between CSR discourse and its implementation. In order to select the most relevant papers in the area of CSR and IR, we applied the method of positive research. Therefore, the review of literature was made by analysing various theoretical and empirical studies. Setting the main coordinates for CSR and IR through theoretical background, we continue with an empirical analysis on 23 companies that voluntarily publish integrated reports. We intend to demonstrate that IR encourages a diffusion of CSR practices, as companies become more interested in their CSR behaviour.

Integrated reporting (IR) is increasingly becoming a practice useful not only for accountability but also for managerial purposes because of its potential role as a signifying practice for integrated thinking (IT). In this perspective, this paper aims to explore which of the objects that are represented in integrated reports provide materiality and common understanding to the concept of IT for its effective implementation within organizations.

This paper is based on a vocabulary approach for interpreting the texts of integrated reports as systems of words that are able to provide meaning for a common understanding of the concept of IT. In particular, by focusing on words and their relationships, the authors combine textual analysis and network text analysis to examine the structure of meaning embedded in the texts of integrated reports of five organizations, which serve as empirical cases for analysis during the period 2012-2018.

The concept of IT is dynamic in its meaning since in integrated reports it is represented by referring to different objects, in the case different types of capital (i.e. financial, human, social-relational, process, organizational and commercial), which are related to each other while following different paths over time. The dynamic nature of the meaning of IT affects the semantic orientation of the reports in a mutual relationship between IT (which conveys flows of information within the reports) and integrated reports (through which flows of meaning are made visible).

This paper opens the way to a linguistic approach for analyzing the different concepts related to IT to make them meaningful in creating (at least temporarily) a common understanding, as well as facilitating coordination within organizations and between organizations and their environment.

It is 10 years since the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) was founded and the development of the IIRC Framework has been adopted by thousands of organisations. This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the motivation for the preparation of integrated reports from a diffusion of innovation (DOI) perspective.

Three case study organisations operating in distinct industry sectors are investigated to ascertain the motivation for the adoption of integrated reporting. DOI theory was adopted as the theoretical lens to guide the research design. An interpretative approach is used to ascertain common themes from an analysis of semi-structured interview transcripts of senior managers and directors.

The findings from these case studies support the main tenets of DOIs theory. The evidence suggests that senior executive leadership plays a significant role in commencing the integrated reporting “journey”. This study finds evidence of DOI characteristics, such as relative advantage, compatibility and observability with respect to the objectives of senior managers. The main motivations for the production of the integrated report were to demonstrate leadership and innovation to stakeholders, overcome the perceived inadequacies of the disclosures required for traditional annual reports, to enhance transparency and to satisfy the changing demands of investors and other stakeholders.

This project captures the perceptions and views of preparers of the integrated report rather than its users. In addition, only three case study sites were investigated, therefore, generalisations would be spurious.

Other organisations yet to consider the production of integrated reports or to re-assess their stakeholder relationships, could use these findings to plan for their own future reporting obligations.

The organisations investigated were a superannuation fund, a multinational company and a charity. All are recognised leaders in their respective industries.

Despite its envisaged benefits, integrated reporting (IR) has yet to achieve its “breakthrough”, especially among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study aims to discern SME leaders’ attitudes toward IR, and thereby to reveal managerial perceptions of both the potential benefits and the challenges that actually prevent them from embarking on IR.

This explorative study is grounded on semi-structured interviews with 16 managers of large German SMEs, which yet do not apply IR but are potential candidates to implement it in the future. The engagement with non-preparers is expected to paint a more representative picture of actual reasons for IR (dis-)engagement compared to prior studies that address the few firms that have adopted IR and overcome its challenges. Applying Brown and Fraser’s (2006) conceptual landscape, results are presented analogous to a business case-, stakeholder accountability- and critical theory dimension.

Contrary to prior studies, which identified stakeholder accountability endeavors as kindling SME managers’ interest in voluntary reporting initiatives, managers regard IR primarily as a business case, serving to achieve legitimacy, improve corporate image, reach out to professional investors and assist in employee recruitment. However, they refrained from actually adopting the novel reporting medium, which suggests that decision-makers might not believe the business case to be as unproblematic as claimed by the proponents of IR. This was traced back to three major impediments that currently inhibit SMEs from reporting in an integrated way, namely, a perceived lack of interest by the relevant publics, infeasibility of the IR concept to meet user needs and preparation costs. These drawbacks resemble those of earlier voluntary reporting experiments, calling into question the “revolutionary” character of IR. The study critically concludes that the future development of IR depends on addressing these barriers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first explorative study to deliberately engage with IR non-preparers to draw conclusions on impediments to IR. The identification of relevant incentives and disincentives for IR among SME managers at first hand not only adds to the small extant IR research body and provides valuable insights for research, practice and standard setting but also contributes to the contemporary debate about dominant legitimacy-based explanations in the broader domain of social and environmental accounting and reporting.

The diffusion of integrated reporting as a practice has stimulated an academic debate about whether integrated reporting has the potential to advance sustainability. The International Integrated Reporting Framework, which guides the preparation of integrated reports, focuses specifically on providers of financial capital and does not refer explicitly to sustainability in a significant way. But there is evidence that integrated reporting has enhanced the provision of sustainability disclosures. This chapter scrutinizes academic research on integrated reporting, focusing on sustainability published from 2010 to 2021. First, we synthesize arguments about aspects of integrated reporting that inhibit the advancement of sustainability as well as those that help advance sustainability. Then we explain a two-pronged approach for improving the sustainability orientation of any future connected reporting framework. The first one relates to building on the current strengths of integrated reporting for advancing sustainability. The second approach concerns tackling the obstacles to promoting sustainability through integrated reporting identified in the literature. This chapter also provides important insights for future research in the field.