Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2015, 63(6), 2161-2170 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201563062161

Social and Environmental Reporting as a Part of the Integrated Reporting

Mihaela Turturea
Department of Accounting and Audit, Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010374 Bucharest, Romania

Social and environmental aspects, considered valuable factors in decision making process, play an important role within the nowadays complex business environment. Recent accounting literature reveals that the need for disclosing non-financial information is widely debated based on the fact that considerable decisions cannot be supported only by referring to past financial performances. This paper, organized as an empirical study, aims to provide an overall image upon social and environmental disclosures inside the integrated reports of the companies which have taken part for three consecutive years in the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Pilot Programme Business Network. The research is conducted among the integrated reports issued by companies belonging to various industries, coming from France, Germany and United Kingdom. The results achieved show that companies fail to present a complete picture regarding their social and environmental performances and implicitly fail to achieve the intended purpose of the IIRC in promoting the accounting for sustainability. An overall result shows that companies coming from Germany disclose the least social and environmental aspects within integrated reports as compared to British and French organizations.

Keywords: integrated reporting, sustainability, social reporting, environmental reporting, complexity, IR Framework, information disclosure, ESG disclosure score
Grants and funding:

This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013, project number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/134197 "Performance and excellence in doctoral and postdoctoral research in Romanian economics science domain". The present paper was previously disclosed within Enterprise and the Competitive Environment Conference in Brno and part of this contribution is to be published within the conference proceedings. Furthermore, I appreciate helpful comments and recommendations coming from the discussion sessions within the conference.

Prepublished online: December 26, 2015; Published: January 1, 2016  Show citation

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Turturea, M. (2015). Social and Environmental Reporting as a Part of the Integrated Reporting. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 63(6), 2161-2170. doi: 10.11118/actaun201563062161
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