Gaps in engagement in and use of Integrated Reporting in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this research was to identify the gaps in engagement and use among the social actors involved with Integrated Reporting (IR) in Brazil: the companies and professionals responsible for promoting it, the organizations that implement it, and the companies and professionals that use it. In Brazil, private organizations may engage in and use IR via the mechanism of mimetic or normative institutional isomorphism, while public ones do so via the coercive mechanism. In addition to this situation, studies have shown that organizations are still adapting to IR framework 1.0 and that there is a need to discuss improvements relating to its guiding principles, as well as the factors that can contribute to facilitating its adoption by organizations. Besides showing a number of gaps to be mitigated in order to facilitate engagement in and use of IR, the findings indicate that the social actors approach could include a change of organizational culture and not only the principles and methodological elements of IR. This study presents reflections and elements so that the social actors involved with IR can implement actions to accelerate engagement in and use of this initiative in Brazil; that is, which contribute to changing the mental model of managers in relation to the process of value creation, preservation, and erosion over time. This is a qualitative, interpretative, and exploratory study, as it covers a recently addressed topic, both in the international and in the national literature. The data were collected from interviews, documents, and observations of participants and non-participants and interpreted using the template analysis technique. The findings revealed five gaps in engagement and use among the social actors to be overcome in order for this initiative to be more effective: an absence of integrated thinking in organizations; exclusion of IR from corporate governance; an absence of standardization of methodologies for measuring impacts and disclosing risks; a lack of knowledge of the range of IR matters; and controversy between the regulation and self-regulation of IR. Therefore, the study contributes with an empirical investigation that discusses the situation regarding the implementation of IR in Brazil with the protagonists of this initiative. It also presents a conceptual model based on the antecedents and consequences of IR that can be used to develop a measurement scale to be used in countries in a similar situation to that of Brazil.