The convergence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), sustainable development, and competitive advantage necessitates greater alignment between the interests of all stakeholders of a company, including its shareholders. This convergence has implications for a company's external reporting. Since a sustainable corporate strategy is about integrating financial and nonfinancial performance, the consequence of this is that companies should report on how well they are achieving this in an integrated way. This lecture will introduce the idea of "integrated reporting" and explore the key arguments for supporting this movement. It will outline the critical issues facing integrated reporting today and how to address them.
Professor Robert Eccles is the first Non-Executive Chairman of Arabesque, a London and Frankfurt-based investment firm that leverages sustainability data (ESG) with quantitative models to offer a quantitative approach to sustainable investing. He joined the faculty of Harvard Business School in 1979 and received tenure in 1989. He is the leading academic authority on integrated reporting, as well as one of the world’s top researchers on sustainability from both a company and investor perspective. An award-winning author of twelve books, heis the founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and a steering committee member of the Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).