Quality of Information Disclosed in Integrated Reports, in the Extracting Sector: Insights from Europe

Abstract

Abstract The study explores to what extent are extracting organizations from the European region, disclosing relevant information about social and environmental practices. To pursue the current exploratory study, a qualitative approach composed of two steps is performed. The first is a content analysis of 15 oil & gas and mining organizations integrated reports proposing a compliance exercise toward the International Integrated Reporting Framework. Then in the second one, the integrated reports of our sample are analyzed using MAXQDA, with the extent to which social and environmental references are positive, neutral, or negative. Thus, the present paper represents the first attempt in qualitative studies in Integrated Reporting with a specific focus on extracting sector. Our results demonstrate that the analyzed sample discloses more information related to the environment than social disclosure.