A critical review of sustainability reporting concept

Abstract

The use of sustainability reporting in financial and institutional communication is an increasingly common practice in business, both in terms of the number of companies engaging in this practice, and in terms of comprehensiveness of the information included in the reports. While there is no doubt about the importance of both financial and sustainability reports, it is a matter of debate whether the corporate reporting should be integrated or could still consist in an array of several, sometimes unrelated, documents. Integrated reporting proposes the integration of financial and non-financial information in a single report, with the aim to improve the information available and to increase transparency on corporate ESG activities. This work aims at assessing whether the integrated reporting is a useful concept and/or practice to provide investors and other stakeholders with more comprehensive information about the business and its environment, beyond the financial performance. Starting from a general overview of the current state of sustainability reporting, this thesis provides some theoretical concepts and regulatory frameworks, and goes through a review of problems and opportunities related to both sustainability and integrated reports. The last chapter is dedicated to two exploratory researches intended to investigate the approaches to integrated reporting in fashion and luxury industry, and to confront the information available within integrated report and 10-k.