Empirical study regarding the integrated reporting practices in Europe

• Main Author: Alina Bratu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania 2017-11-01
• Series: Audit Financiar
• Subjects: Integrated reporting; IIRC Framework; Guiding Principles; Content analysis; Scoring.
• Online Access: http://revista.cafr.ro/temp/Article_9555.pdf

Integrated reporting is a practice which seeks to communicate an organization’s value through a holistic picture integrating both financial and non-financial information. This process is in its incipient phase, with many companies unsure of how prepare a truly integrated report. With the aim of providing a better understanding on integrated reporting and its benefits, a common framework, was developed by The International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC). The main objective of this paper is to assess the compliance level of the integrated reports published for 2015 by the European companies which have adopted the initiative, with the IIRC Framework suggestions regarding its Guiding Principles. This research was carried out by using a content analysis and scoring based methodology. The results reveal that the companies are in different stages regarding the conformity with the IIRC requirements. Moreover, some companies analyzed in this study are in the vanguard of the initiative whereas others produce “combined” rather than “integrated” reports. This research contributes to relevant literature by analyzing the post IIRC Framework publication period, as it studies integrated or annual reports published for the 2015 fiscal year.