ABSTRACT
Although integrated reporting emphasizes the contemporaneous relationship between financial and non-financial capitals, its primary purpose is to explain how an organization creates value over time. This is similar to the purpose of management commentary, which is part of a general-purpose financial report. We compare and contrast the information requirements of an integrated report with the type of information that supplements the primary financial information in general purpose financial reports, prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). We examine whether the information in those reports is intended to be forward-looking and predictive, whether non-financial capitals can (and should) be monetized in order to facilitate integration, and whether the reporting boundary should be drawn in different ways to serve different purposes. We find that the International Integrated Reporting Framework and IFRS do not serve different purposes or apply different approaches, but that – in essence – they are competing frameworks. While IFRS has highly developed standards for reporting financial capital, neither has a well-developed approach for reporting any other capital.
