a b s t r a c tCompanies are being forced to critically re-evaluate how they communicate their financial information to stakeholders. Integrated Reporting, as mandated by the King III Report seeks to combine the reporting of financial and nonfinancial performance measures in a way that promotes corporate strategy. South Africa is leading the way in corporate governance and financial reporting with the first large-scale adoption of Integrated Reporting by listed companies. While there is a marked increase in financial communication from companies, it is not clear how all stakeholders use and value this information. The primary aim of this paper was to investigate how financial information is consumed within the ambit of the new financial reporting standards. Through a national online survey, this study found that very few stakeholders use the Integrated Reports as their main source of financial and investment information, and that these reports are seen as additional information. Annual and interim financial reports by companies are still the mainstay for corporate financial information. While stakeholders currently seldom use the Internet for financial information, they have indicated that they would increasingly prefer to do so. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities and challenges that future Integrated Reporting faces based on these findings.
One of the most recent influential trends in the global environment has been the rise of social media. Stakeholders have found a strong voice in social media, and messages are spread among social media users at an astounding speed across a global landscape. As a result of this phenomenon and in an effort to use this viral spread of messages across social media, companies are increasingly making use of viral marketing. Viral messages are playing an increasingly important role in influencing and shifting public opinion on corporate reputations, brands, and products as well as political parties and public personalities to name but a few. Very little is known about the motivations, attitudes, and behavior of the people who forward viral messages to their online networks. Through in-depth interviews with college-going Generation Y consumers, we explore this relationship between viral media and emotions. We look at two very specific components of online videos that have gone viral: first, the relevance of the video's content and, second, participants' emotional reaction to these videos to try and better explain the viral spread of online video messages. The paper concludes by proposing a decision tree that interusers might subconsciously experience when deciding whether to share a video with their friends or not. The article concludes with a discussion about future research avenues in the area of emotions and viral marketing.
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