Integration Level of Social Environmental Disclosure (SED) Between The Global Reporting Initiative(GRI)- Sustainability Reporting and The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Reporting Among European Companies

Abstract

This critical approach study examines the social and environmental disclosure (SED) between Sustainability Reporting (SR) and Integrated Reporting (IR) among European companies. The research question is to examine the integration level of SED within SR and IR. Applying the critical text analysis method, the GRI G3 guidelines were used to examine a sample of ten European companies. The reports for the selected companies must incorporate fully applied IR without producing any more SR in order to analyse the validity of the data. This study has discovered that there is less integration of SED in IR than SR. It is apparent that the IR approach is more towards the primary groups (investors) rather than other stakeholders, society and the environment as a whole. Hence, IR is only a mirror of sustainability for business strategy. Therefore, IR needs to engage reports with other stakeholders to sustain long-term growth.