Value relevance of integrated reporting: a study of the Bangladesh banking sector

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of integrated reporting (IR) and its association with firm value and liquidity in the context of voluntary adoption. The data cover the period 2013–2018 of all banking companies of Bangladesh that construct 144 firm-year observations. An IR index is developed using international IR framework 2013, and content analysis is performed to measure IR adoption and practice. In addition to ordinary least squares regression, two-stage least squares method is used to minimize the endogeneity concerns. The result claims that banks with bigger board size, higher proportion of female and independent directors, and larger growth opportunity are more likely to adopt and practice IR. This paper documents that IR practice has a significant positive impact on the firm value, which is consistent with the theoretical prediction of corporate disclosure and firm value. Alternatively, the result does not suggest any conclusive evidence on the association between IR practice and stock liquidity. The findings of this paper could assist the regulators for preparing and issuing guidelines for this new reporting paradigm. This research, however, acknowledges the small firm-year observations and subjective judgment of self-constructed IR score.