Integrated Reporting, Textual Risk Disclosure, and Market Value

Purpose – Exploiting the mandatory provision of integrated reporting in South Africa, this paper investigates whether this regulatory switch from the conventional annual report is associated with differences in the level of textual risk disclosure (TRD). This paper also examines the economic usefulness of this regulatory change by observing the impact of TRD on the complying firms’ market values.Design/methodology/approach – Archival data are collected and examined employing time-series difference design and difference-in-differences design.Findings – We find that the level of TRD within the mandatory integrated reporting is significantly lower than that of annual reports. We find that the impact of TRD in integrated reporting on market value compared to that of annual reports is statistically not different from zero. Our further analyses suggest that corporate governance effectiveness is not a moderating factor to our results. Our results are robust to comparisons with the voluntary adoption of integrated reporting in the UK.Originality/value – Collectively, our results suggest that managers’ adherence to the mandatory provision of integrated reporting has significantly decreased the level of (voluntary) TRD they tended to convey within the conventional annual reports, resulting in a trivial impact on market value. These unintended consequences should be of interest to the International Integrated Reporting Council and other bodies interested in integrated reporting.