Emergence of integrated reporting – A need of the green environment and the society

Emergence of Integrated Reporting (IR) is the need of the environment and the society as a whole to enable businesses to present environmental, social or ethical information, alongwith the financial, strategic, and governance information within an annual report. It is to be emphasized over here that while many of the companies are producing substainability report along with the financial report but it is not very descriptive to draw conclusions as no clear directions are there but what is needed is to have a one report describing in detail the actual impact of the business on environment and stakeholders as well. This requirement can easily befulfilled by Integrated reporting as it will allow organizations to release more inclusive and useful reports on all aspects of performance, including environmental, social, and governance, as well as economic, in a concise and user friendly format. This information will allow organizations to provide an assessment of the long-term viability of an organization, as well as meet the needs of investors and other stakeholders. Integrated reporting increases the transparency of the organization, highlighting the issues and the impacts towards governance and structure. The Present paper makes an attempt to discuss the reasons that when we have financial reporting as well as the substainability reporting then why integrated reporting is needed at all and this is done by defining the meaning of Financial reporting, substainability reporting and Integrated Reporting; the emergence of Integrated Reporting, the differences between traditional reporting and Integrated Reporting, the opportunities which will be received,the challenges to be faced through its implementation and the present status of integrated reporting.