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

Acknowledgments

We could not have written this book without the help of many other members of the integrated reporting movement, starting with Sydney Ribot. A research associate at the Harvard Business School who is also working on a narrative web TV series about globalization in Istanbul, she contributed to every chapter and appendix in this book through research, writing, critiquing, editing, and the final polishing before the book could be called done. Sydney also took the lead on Chapter 1, “South Africa,” where we would also like to thank Leigh Roberts for making sure we told the South African story accurately. As someone deeply involved in the movement in South Africa and on a global basis as well, Leigh was well positioned to do that for us.

There were other chapters where we depended upon extensive contributions by others, starting with Tim Youmans, an independent researcher, and Andy Knauer, a research associate, both at the Harvard Business School. Tim and Andy had joint responsibility for Chapter 5, “Materiality,” and 6, “The Sustainable Value Matrix.” Tim had the lead on the former and gets credit for having the insight that materiality should be linked to corporate governance by making its determination a responsibility of a company's board of directors. Tim also gave us excellent feedback on the many drafts of the other chapters. Andy conducted a thorough analysis of the materiality matrices of 91 companies that served as the data backbone for this chapter, no ...