The global development of integrated reporting (IR) is underpinned by the recognition of increased complexity of businesses and stakeholder demands for information relating to financial performance, management, corporate governance, and sustainability being provided in a single, coherent document which facilitates stakeholder decision making. This paper examines the lexical properties of IR following the introduction of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Framework. Using an international sample, we find that when adopted voluntarily, IR are lengthier, use more complex language, and contain more boilerplate statements. Our findings suggest that without regulation, firms may continue to produce long and difficult to understand reports in fear of being perceived as omitting “bad news.” This fear might be justified as we find loss of analyst following and greater analyst uncertainty when voluntarily adopted IR is concise. In the regulated setting of South Africa, however, we find IR has become more concise, and firms that produce longer and more complex documents suffer from a deterioration of their information environment. Our findings suggest that regulators and practitioners need to be cognizant of the potential for an increased volume in reporting to obfuscate the message rather than inform stakeholders.

中文翻译：

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告知或混淆利益相关者：综合报告和信息环境

综合报告 (IR) 的全球发展的基础是认识到业务日益复杂，利益相关者对与财务绩效、管理、公司治理和可持续性相关的信息的需求以单一、连贯的文件形式提供，以促进利益相关者的决策。本文在引入国际综合报告委员会 (IIRC) 框架后检查了 IR 的词汇特性。使用国际样本，我们发现自愿采用时，IR 更长，使用更复杂的语言，并包含更多样板语句。我们的研究结果表明，如果没有监管，公司可能会继续制作冗长且难以理解的报告，以免被视为遗漏“坏消息”。“这种担心可能是有道理的，因为我们发现当自愿采用 IR 时，分析师的关注会减少，分析师的不确定性更大。然而，在南非的监管环境中，我们发现 IR 变得更加简洁，生产更长、更复杂文档的公司遭受信息环境恶化的困扰。我们的研究结果表明，监管者和从业者需要意识到报告数量的增加可能会混淆信息，而不是告知利益相关者。