Purpose This paper aims to establish the extent to which South African state-owned entities (SOEs), where integrated reporting is a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, have incorporated the principles of the international integrated reporting framework. These identified South African SOE reporting practices are compared with the ‘integrated reporting’ related disclosures of SOEs in selected countries, where integrated reporting remains voluntary. Design/methodology/approach This paper deploys a qualitative research approach, to thematically analyse the content of publicly available annual or integrated reports of South Africa SOEs, as the primary country of analysis, with those of their counterparts in five purposively selected countries. The relative scores for the SOEs of each country is calculated using a disclosure index derived from the international integrated reporting framework principles. Findings The paper found that despite being a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, not all South African SOEs complied with all the international integrated reporting framework principles. Accepting the assertion that integrated reporting enhances organisational transparency and accountability, the accountability disclosure practices of South African SOEs appear more comprehensive than their counterparts in other countries. Originality/value Extant research into integrated reporting has primarily focussed on the profit-seeking private sector, with limited research into its applicability in the public sector. This paper attempts to address this paucity by examining aspects of integrated reporting by South African SOEs, which are then compared to accountability reporting practices in other countries.

<abstract> <p>In addition to integrated reporting, which was arguably first introduced by the third King Report on Governance for South Africa (King Ⅲ), King Ⅲ also formally introduced the combined assurance model as a further governance innovation, aimed at enhancing the quality of organisational reporting. Although the combined assurance model is primarily an internal enterprise risk management innovation, designed to incorporate, integrate and optimise all assurance services and functions, it simultaneously enhances the credibility of organisational reporting. Taken as a whole, the combined assurance model enables an effective control environment, supports the integrity of information used for internal decision-making by management, the governing body and its committees; while supporting the integrity of the organisation's external reports. Organisations adopting King Ⅳ, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), are expected to explain how the provisions of the combined assurance model have been implemented. Explaining conformance, introduces an element of innovation into organisational reporting as envisaged by King Ⅳ, by providing stakeholders with assurance about the veracity of the disclosures contained in the internal and external reports of organisations. This exploratory paper analyses the extent to which South African SOEs have conformed to seven key combined assurance indicators. The disclosures contained in the publicly available annual/integrated reports of South African SOEs, listed in Schedule 2 of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), were thematically analysed to fulfil the objective of the study. We found that although the combined assurance related disclosures suggest high levels of adoption by some SOEs, the majority have not provided sufficient information to explain how they have applied combined assurance, if at all. Although their reports appear to provide internal management with some level of assurance about the extent to which risks have been managed, these reports may not necessarily provide external users with confidence that all material risks have been effectively mitigated, within the organisation's risk appetite. This paper discuses implications for policy and practice and concludes by providing avenues for further research.</p> </abstract>

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Sampling has historically been one of the major challenges of the comparative research approach. These sampling challenges primarily result from the way researchers select the cases/samples for the study. In this regard, researchers have to a large extent tended to employ non-probability convenience and purposive sampling techniques. Even though it may be argued that these sampling approaches need not be theory driven as samples tend to evolve in the process of research, more often than not, these sampling methods, especially in comparative research designs, while skewing research attention towards over-researched countries and cases, wealthy nations and incomparable cases, also introduce an element of bias into sampling and therefore into research findings. Thus, this paper argues for a move away from the simplicity of purposive and convenience sampling, to one of the more robust forms of theoretical sampling, in order to improve the research rigour associated with the comparative methodological approach. This paper accordingly postulates this may be achieved by engaging in some form of theoretical sampling. In this regard, this paper describes a two-phase method for generating comparative samples from theories, involving six distinct steps.

Global warming and increasingly volatile weather patterns, arguably caused by anthropogenic climate change, is one of the defining challenges facing the world today. It is therefore imperative that organisations proactively respond by not only disclosing the impact of climate change on their operations, but also by describing their initiatives to combat climate change. Against this backdrop, and since public sector organisations utilise public funds, we argue that public sector organisations should not only account to the public about their stewardship of public resources, but are also obliged to explain how they are safeguarding the public by acknowledging and combatting climate change. Our study therefore explores the disclosure of climate related activities from a purposively selected sample of government departments and organisations in South Africa, a country that has been lauded for the quality of corporate governance processes. We developed a climate change disclosure quality (CCDQ) index to assess the climate change disclosures of these public sector organisations. The CCDQ index applied to the most recent publicly available annual/integrated reports of the selected public sector organisations, took six key disclosure elements into account. While our results reveal that the majority of public sector organisations disclose climate related issues, not all do. Moreover, the extent and scope of these disclosures vary significantly. We accordingly recommend that a framework, utilising the disclosure elements described in this paper, be developed which could be applicable to both private and public sector organisations.