Drivers Of Integrated Corporate Reporting By Listed Entities In Kenya

Abstract

The voluntary choice to issue an integrated reporting is at the disposal of managers. Managers in diverse environments perform differently, by producing dissimilar kinds of sustainability information. There being voluntary disclosures evolving in separate strands in Kenya, there is need to come up with a uniform framework for integrated reporting among firms to promote uniformity and comparability among their corporate reports. The study focused on the examination of non-financial voluntary disclosure with an additional investigation on the Integrated Reporting and its drivers within the corporate disclosure. Specifically, antecedent studies have suggested positive connection between corporate reporting and; board expertise, stakeholders’ interest, regulatory framework, and size of the firm. Theoretical framework of integrated reporting is anchored on stakeholders’ theory, signaling theory and Institutional theory, and proposes a contrast of the main frameworks offered within the relevant literature. Analysis of the literature reveals stakeholders’ interests, regulatory framework, board expertise and the size of the firm have had an effect on the level of integrated corporate reporting disclosure. The end of the dissertation focuses on analyzing how each driver influences level of disclosure among firms listed at NSE. A sample of eleven firms was selected among the listed entities in Kenya and its integrated reports analyzed for a span of five years beginning the year 2013 to 2017. The findings, analyzed by use of statistical package for social science, (SPSS), showed a significant relationship between corporate reporting and regulatory framework, and stakeholders interest, negligible between integrated corporate reporting and company size and no direct relationship between integrated corporate reporting and board expertise The expected findings are expected to be a key resource to policy makers in their quest towards coming up with integrated corporate reporting framework.