Integrated reporting - the future phase of corporate reporting: An analysis

Recently reporting not only confined to financial data, but it extended to other non-financial areas of a corporate enterprise. Corporate reporting is a broader concept that includes both financial and non-financial data. Now-a-days, there has been an emergent concern of social, environmental and ethical reporting along with financial reporting because corporate reporting is undergoing a change towards the concept of sustainable development. Financial reporting gives financial performance and risk only which is not sufficient for rational and high quality decision-making. Hence it is essential to develop new comprehensive and condensed reporting practice considering the diverse needs of heterogeneous groups of stakeholders and integrating the wide range of financial and non-financial factors determine the value of an organisation. As a result Integrated Reporting comes into existence which is a single document report that illuminates the relationship between both financial and non-financial data. Nowadays computerization facilitates the integration of performance reporting and also providing detailed and valuable information of particular interest to different stakeholders through a single report. On the above backdrop, an attempt has been made to analyze the recent trends of corporate reporting in general and integrated reporting in particular.