The world around us is changing at an exponential rate, with huge developments in technology but also huge developments in culture and society, shifting towards a more environmentally aware and long term focus on how business is conducted, and in this case how they report information about how they conduct business, both financial and non-financial factors. Integrated Reporting (IR) has been introduced in recent times as a more comprehensive and more useful method of reporting. This essay will discuss what IR is, the strengths and weaknesses of IR, whether IR is a revolutionary step in accounting and how we should research how beneficial IR is to end users of financial information such as investors and businesses.
What is Integrated …show more content…
With this increase in information divulged by an organisation, we can see a higher level of transparency between organisations and stakeholders which can lead to a higher level of quality organisation stakeholder relationships (Eccles & Krzus, 2010).
By studying themselves, organisations can also gain an increased understanding of themselves and how they should be strategically positioning themselves within their environment, which can lead to positive effects for the organisation such as a more effective long term strategy or a way to become more efficient by identifying areas that may need some improvement (Eccles & Saltzman, 2011). Identifying the links between non-financial and financial information is vital for any modern organisation in order to succeed, risk management and production efficiencies are just two factors that can easily be improved by IR. The shift of focus is also very important for any organisation, hopefully the goal for most organisations is to operate into the foreseeable future rather than focusing on short term profits at all costs, IR is a better system at this regard because of how comprehensive IR is by including non-financial