From Sustainability to Integrated Reporting: How the IIRC Framework Affected Disclosures by a Financial Institution in Australia

This chapter presents a case study on the sustainability reporting and <IR> practices of CBD, a financial institution, and its journey of disclosure. The material presented explores CBD’s need to establish trust and legitimacy after a scandal forced them to their subsequent <IR> journey. In this setting, <IR> has its origins in corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting initiatives (Dumay et al. 2016). Previous researchers have considered the evolution of the ESG reporting process at CBD but have not specifically focused on the years during which CBD participated in the Pilot Program or after it adopted the IIRC’s Guidelines (IIRC 2011), the <IR> Prototype (IIRC 2012), and the <IR> Framework (IIRC 2013), or their most recent reporting years up to 2016. Existing literature examines <IR> in its early stages and the limitations and shortcomings of the IIRC’s framework and practices (de Villiers et al. 2014). Therefore, studying companies in the process of implementing <IR> is valuable for identifying improvements to both the framework and how it is practised. Identifying improvements to both the <IR> Framework and ESG reporting practice is the motivation for this research. In doing so, this study picks up from where prior research by Beck et al. (2017) left off through an analysis of CBD’s integrated reports from 2010 to 2016. We analyse how CBD aligned its reporting to the IIRC’s principles during this period, considering the fact that CBD started its transition to <IR> before in 2010. Beck et al. (2017) explore the reasons why CBD began their journey toward <IR> and examine how their reports developed over the years. Their findings indicate that CBD’s reporting practices mainly focused on investors and other stakeholders to repair lost legitimacy after a scandal in 2004. It was not until 2010 that CBD seems to have regained trust and re-established legitimacy with its shareholders and stakeholders. However, despite deploying the <IR> framework, CBD, once again, became embroiled in further major scandals. It appears that implementing reporting practices only affected the public face of CBD; the organisational culture that allowed these scandals to happen did not change in line with the changes to reporting. Moreover, scandals are endemic to Australia’s financial industry, which further adds to the validity of our findings. The data used to develop this chapter was sourced through a review of publicly available documents published by the IIRC and CBD and builds on research by Dumay et al. (2015) and Beck et al. (2017). CBD is a pseudonym used to preserve anonymity in the previous studies and is continued here. The fact that CBD is an avid reporter and supporter of the <IR> Framework helps us understand the impact of <IR>.