Chapter 3: New Trends and Directions in CSD: The Integrated Reporting

The integrated reporting (IR) represents the most recent proposal in the field of Corporate Social Disclosure (CSD), but not only. In fact, as discussed below in this chapter, it applies a wide concept of integration and may be considered as a synthesis of different forms of voluntary disclosure, that include other tools in addition to the ones described in Chapter 1.

Before presenting the IR framework and its critical issues, we believe it is necessary to introduce some “antecedents” of IR that together with the CSD tools, already examined, may define the complete picture of the roots of IR.

Among the others, the tools and approaches that more significantly have impacted on the IR may be considered the following:¹