INTEGRATED REPORTING – THE NEW DIRECTION IN THE CORPORATE REPORTING

Abstract

According to the World Commission on Environment and Development as a result of the enormous scales of poverty, the emerging ecological crisis and the alteration in the balances of the environment and the climate, humanity has entered an era of global uncertainty. The world is facing the elaborate task to encounter a manner to solve these social, environmental, economic and other problems. The alterations in a perspective impose changes in the range and the content of accountability. Each acting enterprise represents an inseparable part of the society. By accomplishing its activity it affects different stakeholders: investors, creditors, employees, customers, suppliers, regulators and the community in general. The enterprises’ corporate reporting was primarily connected with the disclosure of the annual financial statements reflecting their financial status. The concern over the impact of the enterprises on the environment and the people, as well as the growing information necessity of the stakeholders, require an alteration in the conventional reporting. The enlarged volume and content of the contemporary corporate reports and the absence of a relation between the incorporated financial and non-financial information presented in separate reports determine the necessity of preparing one single integrated report.