Integrated reporting: The current state of empirical research, limitations and future research implications

In view of the increased demand for non-financial reporting after the financial crisis of 2008/2009, integrated reporting (IR) plays a key role in management control and stakeholder relations management. As a consequence of “integrated thinking” IR combines traditional financial accounting with sustainability and corporate governance related issues to enhance the decision usefulness of modern business reporting. Although there has been steady growth in the awareness of IR research (Eccles et al. J Appl Corp Finance 27:8–17, 2015), the current state of empirical IR research activities is not well described so far. This literature review evaluates 44 empirical studies on IR which were published especially after the adoption of the IR framework by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) in December 2013. We will briefly introduce the IR research agenda, which provides a clear structure for the analysis of current empirical research activities in this field. For the market, organization and individual/group decision level, we show which factors contribute to IR implementation and IR quality. Furthermore, empirical research focuses on market reactions to IR. We also stress the limitations of the studies and provide useful recommendation for future IR research activities for each level of analysis.