The Integrated Reporting Movement: Meaning, Momentum, Motives, and Materiality

Chapter 2Meaning

What exactly an integrated report signifies to its audience has been evolving through four continuous, overlapping phases of “meaning-making” (Figure 2.1). The first, Company Experimentation, began in the early 2000s with a handful of companies' efforts to produce their first integrated report. This phase is the initiation in practice of the idea of integrated reporting. Consultants, academics, and other experts instigated the second phase, which we call Expert Commentary, when they began to establish basic principles about integrated reporting based on observations of companies' practices. Including lessons about the costs, benefits, and challenges of integrated reporting and how to overcome them, this theory-building phase started in the mid-2000s. In the late 2000s, the third phase, Codification, began. It is centered on the development of frameworks and standards by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working with other actors in the movement, like companies, investors, and accounting firms. The fourth and most recent phase, Institutionalization, is based on influencing the regulatory and market environment to make it more conducive to the practice of integrated reporting. Starting in the early 2010s, this phase is built on laws and codes of conduct. In this chapter we will focus on the first two phases and introduce the third, which is further discussed along with the fourth phase in Chapter 3.

Figure 2.1 Four Phases in the Evolution of Meaning of Integrated ...