Corporate reporting as the result of reports evolution of a company

Abstract

Issues of transparent corporate reporting become rather important in the context of sustainable social and economic development of society, as well as in the case of careful and efficient use of natural resources. Public corporate reporting becomes one of the key instruments to achieve a company's transparency that creates positive reputation and increases a confidence level to a company from various stakeholders. The existing variety of the definitions of the term "corporate reporting" and lack of clear boundaries in this category structure make authors conduct the detailed analysis of reports evolution in different types of corporate reporting. Scientific novelty of the research is to reveal the interconnection among the main forms of the modern corporate reports of organizations – the sustainability report, the social report and the ecological report – as well as in the systematization of the accounting material presented in these types of reports. The important role of the integrated reporting as a modern format of reports that is able to accept new challenges of post-industrial economy has been revealed. The authors explain the main concepts of the integrated reporting that combines financial, ecological and social aspects of a company operation and helps to focus on the development of a company business model presenting information, which was previously insolated in financial, tax, statistical and non-financial reports of a company. The importance of a management accounting system to provide the information necessary to form modern forms of the corporate reporting of an organization is emphasized. The theoretical significance of the research results is that the substantial borders of the contemporary corporate reporting system have been specified and the logic and interconnection between the non-financial reports (social report, ecological report and sustainability report) and the integrated forms of corporate reporting have been revealed. The practical importance of the study is to analyze the current practice of report making in ecological and social reports of the Russian companies operating in oil and gas, telecommunication, financial, mining, chemical and transport sectors of economy. These analysis results may improve the management of formation and publication of the main non-financial aspects in reports of the Russian companies.