Non Financial Disclosure And Integrated Reporting

The increasingly crucial role of companies’ non-financial disclosure (NFD) and integrated reporting (IR) has led to a lively debate among academics, practitioners, and regulators on the approaches, framework, contents, principles, and standards that should oversee these forms of reporting. Through several expert contributions, conducted both with qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this book provides an up-to-date portrait of the debate by exploring corporate NFD either in its mandated contents or voluntary information. Contributing authors provide studies that encompass the different lines of NFD, namely non-financial risk reporting, sustainability reporting, and intellectual capital reporting, as well as the integration of financial and non-financial information through IR, the assurance of the NFD and IR through auditing activities, and the role of management and CFOs in NFD and IR.

For researchers and managers interested in performance measurement, this volume includes innovative research that sheds light on topics such as the determinants of disclosure quality, the identification of appropriate metrics, the relationship among the different disclosure mechanisms and between voluntary and mandatory disclosure, and many more.

This book critically examines the implementation and adoption of integrated reporting (IR) in organizations and corporations. A relatively new area of policy and practice, IR has rapidly gained considerable prominence since the formation of the International Integrated Reporting Committee in 2010. The book analyzes the outcomes and benefits as well as the shortfalls of integrated reporting. It offers an introduction to the foundations of IR and a comprehensive overview of its use through a number of detailed case studies. Lastly, it discusses the outlook for further developments in sustainability accounting and reporting.

This book investigates the going-concern principle in the non-financial disclosure by companies in the international scenario proposing concepts and challenges to come. Following the main accounting literature, requirements and regulations, this book proposes the current state of the art in the non-financial disclosure, collecting main mandatory and voluntary frameworks and standards (e.g. European Directive 2014/95/UE on non-financial information, Global Reporting Initiative, International Integrated Reporting Council, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Climate Disclosure Standard Board, Carbon Disclosure Project, AA1000). This is a useful proposition for the investigation of the presence versus absence of the going concern in the sustainability and non-financial reports and disclosure by companies. Through a qualitative methodology, this book is intended to show the incidence of the going-concern in the non-financial disclosure and to what content and meaning it is refereed. Several issues and characteristics of information provided to stakeholders are drafted.

This book investigates the going-concern principle in the non-financial disclosure by companies in the international scenario proposing concepts and challenges to come. Following the main accounting literature, requirements and regulations, this book proposes the current state of the art in the non-financial disclosure, collecting main mandatory and voluntary frameworks and standards (e.g. European Directive 2014/95/UE on non-financial information, Global Reporting Initiative, International Integrated Reporting Council, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Climate Disclosure Standard Board, Carbon Disclosure Project, AA1000). This is a useful proposition for the investigation of the presence versus absence of the going concern in the sustainability and non-financial reports and disclosure by companies. Through a qualitative methodology, this book is intended to show the incidence of the going-concern in the non-financial disclosure and to what content and meaning it is refereed. Several issues and characteristics of information provided to stakeholders are drafted.

This book focuses on the impact of the disclosure of non-financial risk, which could be seen as the most relevant non-financial information (NFI), in the aftermath of the 2014/95/EU Directive. The author analyses whether the switch from voluntary to mandatory NFI enhance the quality of disclosed NF risk-related information and the usefulness of the risk disclosure for investors. The book focuses specifically on the mandatory disclosure of non-financial (NF) risks as required by the EU Directive for listed Italian companies, investigating both the state of art of its disclosure and its usefulness for investors. In doing so, the book contributes to fill two relevant gaps in risk literature. The first research gap is related to the insufficient investigation of the disclosure of NF risks. Companies mandated to disclose risk-related information focused mainly on financial risks, in spite of the width of the definition of risk, conceived as information about any opportunity, danger, threat, or exposure that has or could impact the company in the future. The second gap is that empirical evidence about the effects of corporate risk disclosures is still limited, and the potential benefits of the disclosure of information on risks have not been fully explored. In particular, the relationship between risk disclosures and firm value is under researched, as the risk literature mainly focuses on the incentives question, related to the motives for which companies decide to disclose. The research in this book focuses on Italy, a country that provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of mandatory NF risk disclosure on firm market value, being one of the biggest industrial European countries that had not mandatory legislation for NFI disclosure, and also one of the leading countries in voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting at an international level. It has been carried out in the fiscal year 2017, the first year of the application of the mandatory NF disclosure for obliged Italian listed PIEs. The book contributes both to the measurement literature, as it presents a self-constructed quality NF risks and to the value relevance analysis literature, providing evidence of the usefulness of financial and non-financial risk-related disclosures in the Italian context.

This volume aims at analysing the main tools, frameworks and issues concerning sustainability disclosure. Particular emphasis is given to the Integrated Reporting, with the aim to identify its antecedents, use within companies, as well as its implementation issues, strengths and weaknesses.

Although the need to expand the boundaries of financial reporting has been discussed since the mid-1990s, little consideration has been given to the evolution and discourses of integrated reporting of non-financial aspects. Yet by investigating how and why an organisation defines and its reporting boundaries, it is possible to understand what is truly "valued" (or not) in its business model. This innovative book reviews the guidelines and frameworks from the major relevant international organisations including: the International Accounting Standards Board, Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, International Integrated Reporting Council, Carbon Disclosure Standards Board, and the World Intellectual Capital Initiative, and analyses their development and impact on the boundaries of financial and non-financial reporting. Illustrated with case studies and interviews with representatives of these organisations, this concise volume makes a significant contribution to the future of reporting theory and practice. It will be of great interest to advanced students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers.