Integrated reporting, mind the gap!

Gathering from Paul Druckman‘s experience with the 90+ pilot companies across the world working with integrated reporting, he sees a mind shift slowly taking place. “It breaks down silos in businesses, creates different thinking, it brings clarity and conformity to the processes and the business model.”

20-80 percent

Only 20 percent of the value of an organization is represented in its annual return and financial statements, Paul Druckman states. “When I was qualifying as an accountant back in the seventies it was the reverse of that.” Business has become more complex, he sees a need for companies and organizations to address this difference in the way they report. “We need to fill that 80 percent gap. Some of that is sustainability—environmental and social indicators—but a huge chunk of it is what you could call intangibles.” He names examples such as intellectual property for a software company or talent management and innovation for services businesses. “We aim to address all of that; it’s a big task but that’s what we’re trying to do.”

‘The Netherlands is ahead’

In ten years’ time, Druckman hopes the International Integrated Reporting Council will have achieved that the integrated report will have become the primary report of organizations. According to Druckman, who was a speaker at the 2013 Global Conference on Sustainability and Reporting in Amsterdam recently, when it comes to the mindset that is needed to achieve this, The Netherlands is “a lot further ahead than most other countries in the world”.

References

This video was taped at the 2013 Global Conference on Sustainability and Reporting hosted by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in Amsterdam, May 22-24, 2013.

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