Integrated reporting and analyst behaviour in diverse institutional settings

Purpose - Given the limited studies that have started to focus on contexts where integrated reporting (IR) is voluntarily adopted, this paper aims to explore the moderating role of institutional characteristics on the association between voluntary report release and analyst forecast accuracy. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses a quantitative empirical research method grounded on voluntary disclosure theory to provide empirical evidence on an international sample of companies choosing to release integrated reports. Preliminarily, a cluster analysis is used to group countries according to institutional patterns. Multivariate analyses detect the associations between report release choice and analysts’ forecast accuracy across clusters. Multiple econometric approaches are used to address the endogeneity concerns. Findings - IR release is not informative for the market unless considering systematic variations across different institutional settings. Analysts’ forecast is more accurate for IR adopters located in strong institutional enforcement settings than for all the other companies. In the strong institutional setting that is also characterized by a pluralistic society, IR release benefits for the market are conditioned by the fact that the choice to release IR depends on environmental, governance and social disclosure-based managers remuneration and disclosure requirements. In weak institutional settings, IR release is not beneficial for the forecast accuracy. Research limitations/implications - Academics and practitioners can gain understanding of the usefulness of voluntary IR across different institutional settings. Originality/value - The study advances the understanding of the IR’s informativeness, overcoming the common dichotomous distinctions between strong and weak institutional settings.