Corporate Disclosure, Materiality, and Integrated Report: An Event Study Analysis

• Main Authors: Maria Cleofe Giorgino, Enrico Supino, Federico Barnabè
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-11-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: corporate disclosure; materiality; integrated report; event study; share price
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2182

Within the extensive literature investigating the impacts of corporate disclosure in supporting the sustainable growth of an organization, few studies have included in the analysis the materiality issue referred to the information being disclosed. This article aims to address this gap, exploring the effect produced on capital markets by the publication of a recent corporate reporting tool, Integrated Report (IR). The features of this tool are that it aims to represent the multidimensional impact of the organization’s activity and assumes materiality as a guiding principle of the report drafting. Adopting the event study methodology associated with a statistical significance test for categorical data, our results verify that an organization’s release of IR is able to produce a statistically significant impact on the related share prices. Moreover, the term “integrated” assigned to the reports plays a significant role in the impact on capital markets. Our findings have beneficial implications for both researchers and practitioners, adding new evidence for the IR usefulness as a corporate disclosure tool and the effect of an organization’s decision to disclose material information.