Integrated Reporting als Trend in der externen Berichterstattung: Bedarfsanalyse sowie mögliche Umse

The quote "We are drowning in a flood of information and yet starving for knowledge," which originated in 1985, aptly reflects the current situation in corporate reporting. Over the past few decades, there has been a noticeable trend of increasing reporting volume from companies; however, this does not automatically lead to an improvement in the information supply for the report recipients. This loss of information is often related to the fact that the right information—namely, financial data—is usually not presented in a recipient-oriented manner, or the recipients simply lack the big picture in corporate reporting. To resolve this conflict, various institutions and companies have contemplated how corporate reporting should look in the future. One new approach that could improve reporting and thus answer the previously posed question is the concept of Integrated Reporting. This aims to reduce the scope of current reports to relevant information while presenting it in an interconnected manner. Consequently, Integrated Reporting has become the dominant topic in recent years when experts discuss current trends in external reporting. However, since the development of this approach was initiated, there has been a problem: both the companies preparing the reports and the recipients of the integrated report lack a unified understanding of the concept, which this book aims to address.