HOW INTEGRATED REPORTING MEETS THE INVESTORS AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS’ INFORMATION NEEDS

The external corporate reporting is currently debated both in the professional and the academic contexts, given the misalignment between information provided by companies and real information needs from investors and other stakeholders. Such misalignment seems to be reducible by the integrated report, as proposed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). Such report, that is already mandatory in some countries, is raising rich interest from scholars and practitioners: several companies around the world are already preparing their integrated report. The research is aimed to verify whether and how such report can really contribute to the corporate reporting and to the relationships among the people belonging to the corporate environment. Along this way, the research is aimed to answer to the following research question: how integrated report favours the alignment between corporate reporting and stakeholder’s informative needs? In order to answer such research question, qualitative and quantitative approaches will be jointly used to analyse: a) the investors and other stakeholders’ information needs; b) the companies behaviour related to the integrated report preparation; c) the reactions of investors and other stakeholders to the first integrated report initiatives; d) the role of standard setters and regulators in encouraging the institutionalization of the integrated report and the gradual alignment of the integrated report to the stakeholders’ needs. The most relevant scientific impact is related to the identification of the interaction processes and the reciprocal influence among actors involved in the regulation, preparation and use of the integrated report within the reporting environment.