Integrated Reporting Quality: An Empirical Analysis

Integrated Reporting (IR) represents the most recent evolution of the corporate reporting movement. Despite the proposed benefits to stakeholders and the number of contributes aiming at identifying best practices in its adoption, IR is still scarcely diffused among companies and when it is adopted the framework is not fully implemented. Starting from these premises, this paper aims to assess the quality of integrated reports issued by firms. We have developed a scoring model and an IR Scoreboard (IRS), which were applied to analyze 116 integrated reports issued in years 2013 and 2014. The main findings show that IR quality is low. Generally, firms follow the IR framework, but scarce information is disclosed on aspects such as capital, the business model, strategic priorities, and the value creation process; more attention is given to the IR form than to its content. It should be emphasised that the model for assessing the quality of IR developed by the authors and proposed in this article is highly original and has in fact subsequently been taken as a reference by the majority of articles that have studied the quality of IR.