The Adoption of Integrated Reporting in Lebanon (An Exploratory Study)

Abstract

This research seeks to explore the potential adoption of integrated reporting (IR) in Lebanon and highlight the stakeholders' need for a more comprehensive reporting tool. For this purpose, the characteristics of Roger's diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory (2003) were used to investigate the factors that will motivate or hinder the adoption of IR in Lebanon. The methodology of this study was based on the sequential exploratory mixed method. In which the research started first with a qualitative study using the theme extracted from DOI theory based on a study by Samy & Robertson (2019), to formulate interview questions that asked five knowledgeable auditors in IR through semi-structured interviews, the interviews were analyzed by thematic analysis. from the result of the qualitative study, the research developed the research hypotheses, and the instrument tool for quantitative data collection was created. In the quantitative phase, the questionnaire was distributed to 290 participants experts in the accounting and finance field. Based on the Integrated of two phases, this study revealed that the relative advantage of innovation IR has a positive advantage on the adoption of IR, and incompatibility hurts the adoption of IR, whereas the complexity of innovation (IR) hurts the adoption of IR according to Samy & Robertson (2019) and the first phase of this study(qualitative phase), while the quantitative phase found that no relationship between themes of complexity that are emerged from the semi-structured interview and adoption of IR.