A lot of icing but little cake? : taking integrated reporting forward

Perego, Paolo and Kennedy, Steve and Whiteman, Gail (2016) A lot of icing but little cake? : taking integrated reporting forward. Journal of Cleaner Production, 136 (Part A). pp. 53-64. ISSN 0959-6526

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Abstract

Integrated reporting has fast emerged as a new accounting practice to help firms understand how they create value and be able to effectively communicate this to external stakeholders. While insightful experiences from the early-adopters of integrated reporting start to accumulate, the development of the field and how integrated reporting may be successfully implemented remains challenging and contested. Several issues are still controversial with no consensus reached on the central purpose about integrated reporting. This paper relies upon a qualitative approach to accomplish two objectives. First, we provide a review of the embryonic academic literature in the integrated reporting field in order to summarize extant knowledge. Second, in response to a gap in the literature on managerial perceptions concerning integrated reporting, we present the sensemaking approaches of three key experts impacting integrated reporting practices at the global level using semi-structured interviews. Our findings suggest that experts perceive the field to be fragmented and believe that most companies currently have weak understanding of the business value of integrated reporting. The experts give insights into how they perceive the field to be progressing despite challenges and on where they see improvements in the diffusion of practices in integrated reporting. Our study contributes to this special issue by reframing the existing implementation challenges of integrated reporting into promising and inclusive research opportunities that align the priorities of both academia and business.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Cleaner Production
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Cleaner Production. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Cleaner Production, 136 Part A, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.01.106
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300
Subjects:
?? integrated reportingiirccorporate sustainability reportingmaterialityvalueorganizational sensemakingenvironmental science(all)strategy and managementindustrial and manufacturing engineeringrenewable energy, sustainability and the environment ??
ID Code:
78392
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
17 Jun 2016 10:28
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
31 Dec 2023 00:39