The Integrated Reporting Movement: Meaning, Momentum, Motives, and Materiality

Chapter 3Momentum

While the universal adoption of integrated reporting is by no means inevitable, its current trajectory remains positive. Though less mature than sustainability reporting, integrated reporting is, at its core, a social movement.¹ When put into practice by companies and used by the audience of report consumers, it can transform the way resource allocation decisions are made inside companies and markets across the globe. Its social goal is to use corporate reporting as a means to influence companies and investors such that they incorporate the consequences of the positive and negative externalities of corporate decisions (most typically referred to as “sustainability”² regarding social and environmental issues) and the increasing importance of intangible assets. A key element of this is fostering longer-term thinking and taking more explicit account of all the “capitals” a company uses and transforms in creating value.

Defined as a loosely organized but sustained campaign in support of a social goal—often implementation of or resistance to a change in society's structure or values—social movements are by definition collective efforts.³ Although they may differ in size, this type of group action results from the more or less spontaneous coalescence of individuals and organizations whose relationships are not defined by rules and procedures but by their common outlook on society.⁴ The success of any social movement requires the participation, support, and collaboration ...