The impacts of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues on an organisation’s bottom line are intuitively well understood.
Consider the negative impacts of the Deepwater oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on BP’s bottom line, or the positive impact of General Electric’s environmentally driven business strategy – ecomagination.
The idea therefore that sustainability issues should be fully integrated into business strategy and reflected in an organisation’s performance reporting seems obvious. Leading companies are beginning to transform their business strategies and performance reporting in order to meet their stakeholders’ increasing expectations for information that provides a holistic representation of their performance. This move towards “Integrated Reporting” – presenting a company’s financial and non-financial performance to stakeholders in a clear and concise format, has been applauded internationally, with several companies receiving recognition for their reports.
This paper provides an overview of the global state of play in integrated reporting, providing insights into: • Global and Australian trends in sustainability reporting and integrated reporting • Developments in global standards, guidelines and frameworks that guide integrated reporting • Emerging best practice approaches to integrated reporting and the integration of sustainability strategy into business strategy • Governance mechanisms that facilitate the integration of ESG performance • The key challenges presented to organisations as they transition to integrated reporting, including the associated cultural and change management challenges • The key organisational benefits being realised by integrated reporting.
It concludes by outlining the key issues that organisations should consider when developing a roadmap towards integrated reporting.
Hugh Grant,Director, Net Balance
Association for Sustainability in Business Inc Conference 2011 – Taking Care of Business: Sustainable Transformation” – 15th& 16th September – Radisson Resort, Gold Coast, Australia
