The Integrated Reporting Paradigm: Antecedents, Present and Future Perspectives

Integrated reporting (IR) has emerged as an accounting change initiative and has rapidly gathered worldwide attention. Great expectations are placed in IR becoming the ultimate tool to secure valuable strategy and business model of disclosure. Although often attributed to the sustainability domain, this topic deserves recognition within a broader discourse on the transformative nature of corporate reporting. Surely, IR represents a theme of great controversy, struggling to find strong theoretical roots as well as a more effective acknowledgment at a practical level. Given these premises, this book provides an in-depth review of the field, enhancing the IR conceptualization through a multi-level perspective of analysis. To this end, it explores the historical background of contemporary integrated reporting practices, illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of the prevailing approaches. The book also analyses the theories that have been used to interpret the IR rationale and explain its wide-spread adoption among organisations. Lastly, it discusses and evaluates the state and the extent of the academic debate, identifying interesting future research paths.