Reshaping Risk Disclosure through Integrated Reporting: Evidence from Italian early adopters

The purpose of this paper is to explore Integrated Reporting (IR) and risk disclosure (RD) and demonstrating the interconnection between business strategies and risk. Through a content analysis, the paper explores the management commentary and Integrated reporting of Italian companies at the end of 2015. The study reveals that many of the companies have embedded financial reporting into IR. We find extensive information about risks and opportunities, in relation to the management of the six capitals. The paper represents an investigation into risk disclosure in IR. It adds knowledge to the opportunity offered by IR in meeting stakeholder’s information needs, compared to traditional tools of corporate reporting. The results could be of interest both for legislator and standards setters, to bring them up to date with enhanced disclosure of risk and opportunities which IR offers with respect to the more traditional forms of disclosure. This is the first country-based study investigating risk disclosure provided through IR looking at three different dimensions: the metrics of RD (monetary or non-monetary); the outlook orientation (past, present or future) and the type of risk news (good or bad news). The results are relevant to detect how companies act and what can be done to improve risk disclosure.