Does Innovation Spur Integrated Reporting?

Abstract

This study analyses whether country-level innovation performance and firm-level innovation commitment are associated to adopting the integrated reporting in Europe. The empirical analysis relies on a logistic regression model applied to 388 firm-year observations regarding firms located in Europe and data between 2016–2019. The results show a positive and significant association between country-level innovation performance and integrated reporting uptake. Moreover, at a firm level, the data partially support that the influence of innovation commitment on the likelihood of publishing integrated reports is higher for firms with a higher-level of sustainability performance. This research contributes to the literature by focusing simultaneously on the impact of country-level innovation performance and firm-level innovation commitment on integrated reporting acceptance in the European setting. In addition, the adopted country-level conceptual support is based on the institutional theory combined with the framework of the national innovation systems. The latter, to the best of our knowledge, has not yet been applied in this line of research.