Is There a Theory of the Firm for Non-Financial Reporting? The Case of Integrated Reporting

2 employees). Despite the significance of such a topic to understand and appreciate the role and objective of accounting and reporting, few studies have extended such investigation to the emergent forms of reporting practices, such as sustainability, intangibles and integrated reporting. Marzo (2014) represents an exception, which has started to problematise how the reference to a theory of the firm can assist the investigation of Intellectual Capital and of its reporting practices in a consistent way. Nonetheless this initial effort, a peripheral number of works have followed this path. This paper aims to fill this void. Starting from the analysis of a representative type of non-financial reporting, namely Integrated Reporting and its framework, it carries out two levels of investigation. First, it explores the theory of the firm which the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) has referred to in developing the above mentioned document. Second, by relying on the results of the first level of analysis, the paper will also assess the internal (in)consistencies of the fundamental pillars at the core of the analysed types of reporting. Moving from this examination, the contribution that this work intends to provide to the literature and practice is twofold. This study is, in the authors’ knowledge, the first attempt to analyse non-financial reporting from a theory of the firm perspective. Accordingly, it can shed light on relevant aspects. First, using a theory of the firm perspective is useful to understand which are the explicit and implicit assumption upon the model of the firm lying at the core of reporting. Indeed, clarifying the theory of the firm at the core of reporting could help identifying and testing hypotheses about the relevance of reporting in many areas of study, such as its role in the value creation process. Moreover, scholars and practitioners could take benefit from understanding the sometimes hidden influence of taken for granted assumptions and therefore, challenge what they could believe to be the natural order of things, whereas it is merely the product of fertile but human minds. Second, the conceptual similarities and differences existing between the forms of reporting that populate the non-financial field will emerge, thus providing clarifications in a corporate reporting environment that appear nowadays complex and highly intermingled