Entitlements and Time: Integrated Reporting's Double-edged Agenda

Abstract

This paper argues that the Integrated Reporting (IR) framework developed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) is double-edged from a critical sustainability perspective. The paper is based on qualitative content analysis of public documents from four leading non-financial reporting organisations: the IIRC, the Accounting for Sustainability Project, the Global Reporting Initiative and the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa. This analysis shows that IR moves away from three key tenets of prior social and environmental reporting frameworks by privileging: (i) communication over holding organisations accountable, (ii) organisational over social sustainability and (iii) the entitlements of providers of financial capital over other stakeholders. Yet, IR is also a practical attempt to shift financial capital from a short-term to long-term investment horizon. As critical social and accounting theorists have argued, extensive short-term investment is a threat to environmental and social sustainability. Hence, IR has the potential to progress sustainability goals if it forms part of a broader re-organisation of capital markets to reward longer term perspectives.

Notes

1 Except for one reference to the IIRC's concept of integrated thinking when discussing the relationship between IR and GRI 4 (see GRI 2013, 85).

2 Although the concept of ‘capitals’ would of course be too anthropocentric for deep-green model. This issue was also raised in public feedback to the IIRC.