APPLICATION OF INTEGRATED REPORTING IN INDIAN CORPORATE SCENARIO

Headnote

ABSTRACT

Integrated Reporting is a new approach for Indian corporate sector. With the inclusion of business responsibility reporting guidelines given by SEBI (Security Exchange Board of India), Indian reporting has been changed. Now, listed companies report financial as well as social performance in their annual reports. This study gives a content analysis about various aspects of Indian corporate reporting with integrated reporting framework. For this purpose, 10 large scale organisations have been selected in which 5 are public and 5 are private sector organisations. A comparative study has been conducted with content analysis, t-test & anova between public & private sector organisation on the basis of their reporting elements of Annual reports for the financial year 2013-14. The finding of this study shows that all companies are reporting almost all the aspects and there is no significant difference among reporting of all selected companies.

Keywords: Integrated Reporting, Reporting, Business Responsibility Reporting, Content Analysis.

INTRODUCTION

Integrated reporting (IR) means reporting in an integrated manner. It is a process in which organisation's strategy, governance, performance are communicated for value creation in short, medium and long run.(IIRC, 2011) Under this, a report is prepared which fully integrates a company's financial and non-financial performance aspects. In other words, it is the combination of financial report and sustainable report. Companies can use it as a management tool as it helps management and stakeholders for decision-making.

In 2013, an integrated reporting framework has been developed by The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) which is a principle-based framework rather than a detailed disclosure and this measurement standard is named as integrated reporting. The framework has given overall content of integrated report (IR). IR is mainly meant for private sector to report about the organisation's strategy, its governance and its performance but public sector and NPOs (not for profit organisations) can also adopt this framework. The prime objective of an integrated report is to explain to the providers of financial capital about the way an organisation generates value over time. In integrated reporting, only material aspects are needed to be disclosed.

There are 3 fundamental concepts on which Integrated reporting framework is based i.e. value creation, value creation process, and 6 types of capitals.

Elements of integrated reporting:

1. "Organisational overview (what...