The Role of Integrated Reporting in Enhancing Corporate Transparency and Communication

Abstract

The primary purpose of the research is to analyze and evaluate the prospects for the success of Integrated Reporting in terms of its potential to increase corporate transparency and enhance corporate communication. The relevance of the decision of this scientific problem is that the European Union published a proposal for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive in April 2021 that highlights the importance of intangible assets and value creation. The Directive serves to ensure companies provide consistent and comparable sustainability information. In this context, it places sustainable reporting on par with financial reporting. Systematization of the literary sources and approaches indicates that company reports developed from a financial perspective over the triple bottom line sustainability approach to an integrated approach. Moreover, stakeholders are increasingly demanding more information. Reducing information asymmetries has always been an essential task of company reports. Consequently, the primary purpose of this research is to identify whether Integrated Reporting, according to The International Integrated Reporting Framework, is a successful tool to enhance corporate transparency and communication. Integrated Reporting presents financial and non-financial information against the background of their contribution to value creation. Methodological tools of the research are a research synthesis and meta-analysis literature review. These instruments are developed and enriched using document analysis and systematic content analysis. The research findings suggest that integrated reports enhance transparency and communication, leading to more trust and resilience. Moreover, the results indicate that the principle-oriented framework and the Guiding Principle Materiality enable companies to respond to their specific characteristics to meet the stakeholders’ requirements. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that Integrated Reporting can be seen as a suitable instrument for creating greater transparency, thus, a further development step in corporate reporting and communication. Integrated Reporting should therefore not be understood exclusively as a separate reporting tool but rather as a holistic management approach to implement integrated corporate management. The research results are beneficial for academic researchers and practitioners since the research provides an insightful and comprehensive overview of Integrated Reporting. Furthermore, it is also possible to derive practical recommendations for the application of Integrated Reporting.