Adoption of Integrated Reporting in Emerging Economies: Evidence from Bahrain

Abstract

This study investigated the extent to which integrated reporting has been implemented and the factors that determine its adoption in Bahrain. The annual reports of companies listed on the Bahrain Bourse were examined for the period 2017-2019. Then, content analysis was conducted to assess the extent of integrated reporting in 16 listed companies through the integrated reporting index (IRI), which comprises 45 disclosure items divided across 6 categories. The results indicated that the companies sampled had moved toward integrated reporting between 2017 and 2019, despite it not yet being mandatory in Bahrain. The most frequent disclosures concerned principal activities and markets, reporting boundary, accounting standards, and the link between past and current performance. However, no disclosures were provided for social risks and opportunities, as well as stakeholders' involvement in forming and resource allocation for implementing strategy; moreover, corporate reports neglected any forward-looking outlook, while disregarding performance indicators. extended further regression analysis was performed to identify the determinants for adopting integrated reporting, specifically company-specific characteristics. The results revealed that IRI is significantly and positively related to company size. Contribution/Originality: This study contributes to the current body of literature on integrated reporting in two areas: first, it enriches the corpus by focusing on a developing country, Bahrain, where few studies have been undertaken; second, it provides empirical evidence on the determinants for the extent to which integrated reporting has been adopted.

Integrated reporting disclosure in Malaysia: regulations and practice

“…This indicates that the Malaysian companies are trying to improve disclosure on IR even though IR is still voluntary practice. This mean IRDL of Malaysian companies is slightly higher than that of disclosure score in Jordanian companies (of about 51.28%) (Al Amosh and Mansor, 2020), Vietnamese companies (with mean of 43.00%) (Nguyen et al, 2021) and Bahraini companies (of about 39.99%) (Salwa et al, 2020). Meanwhile, the average IRDL score in Malaysia is low compared to that found in developed countries, such as Australia (with mean of 68.50%) (Omran et al, 2021) and France (73.60%) (Hichri, 2021).…”

“…To measure IR disclosure in corporate reports of Malaysian companies, this study used several statistical techniques (e.g. descriptive statistics and frequency distributions) while independent samples t -tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) are applied to compare the different IRDL and IRDQ between companies over time (2017–2019) (Chanatup et al , 2019; Salwa et al , 2020).…”

“…Thus, the voluntary disclosure of IR information is one way to gain such social and organisational legitimacy (Cooray et al , 2021; Busco et al , 2019). Legitimacy theory is frequently applied in the context of IR disclosure (Wahl et al , 2020; Cooray et al , 2021; Salwa et al , 2020). Ahmed Haji and Anifowose (2016) argue that active companies with more IR disclosure may attract more attention from the government and public.…”

“…Busco et al , 2019; Frias‐Aceituno et al , 2013; García‐Sánchez et al , 2019; Garcia-Sanchez et al , 2020; Vitolla et al , 2019b; Raimo et al , 2020b; Chouaibi and Hichri, 2020), with less attention paid to emerging and developing markets (e.g. Ghani et al , 2018; Ahmed Haji and Anifowose, 2016; Suttipun and Bomlai, 2019; Ahmed et al , 2021; Cooray et al , 2020; Cooray et al , 2021; Al Amosh and Mansor, 2020; Salwa et al , 2020; Albetairi et al , 2018). Therefore, the current study fills this gap in the literature by assessing the current IR regulation status and the trends in IR disclosure in the annual reports of companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia.…”

“…Our study contributes to the existing IR literature in the following ways. First, this paper contributes to the enrichment of the literature by providing insights into IR practice from the perspective of the Southeast Asian region (specifically Malaysia) by conducting a comprehensive analysis of all companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia that prepare IR, in contrast to previous studies (Ahmed Haji and Anifowose, 2016; Ahmed et al , 2021; Cooray et al , 2021; Al Amosh and Mansor, 2020; Salwa et al , 2020). Second, the current study develops a comprehensive IR disclosure checklist based on IIRF (comprising the content elements, fundamental concept and guiding principles), which can be used to evaluate the current status and the trends of IRDL and IRDQ in different markets.…”