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 to 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.
