Il report integrato nel settore di estrazione dei minerali preziosi delle società quotate sul mercato sudafricano di Johannesburg (JSE)

The aim of this study is to analyze the current state of Business Reporting, which includes, in addition to financial information, non-financial (qualitative and quantitative) one about the companies’ ability to generate value in a sustainable manner and the associated risks. In particular the purpose is to check the elaboration by the companies of a new business reporting framework, called Integrated Report (Eccles, & Krzus, 2010; Eccles, & Armbrester, 2011), which is able to link financial information to the non-financial one disclosed by the companies, with a particular focus to the items of environmental and social sustainability and to corporate governance. As a result the integrated report can be evaluated as a reporting tool which is able to systematically judge the balanced correlation between all information disclosed by the firms. The aim of this innovative reporting tool is to disclose information about the company’s strategy, its corporate governance and its performance, in order to reflect the commercial, politic, social and environmental context, within which the company operates and to disclose a detailed description of the ways the companies create the present and future value. Although it has not been defined yet a standardized structure and there are no detailed guidelines for disclosure (Rossouw, 2012), the integrated report has already been adopted by an increasing number of companies . This approach shows a fundamental change in the evolution of the financial and non-financial reporting, in order to realize a gradual integration of financial and management accounting (Ansari, & Euske, 1995; Zambon, 2011). In particular the aim of this paper is to identify the major items of non-financial disclosure in the Integrated Report, in order to specify the major benefits arising from the adoption of a unique report, instead of the traditional annual report, which is focused on financial dimensions, and of the other reports of corporate reporting (such as sustainable and environmental reporting and the intellectual capital statements), which are drawn up by the companies as voluntary reports. The choice of the analysis of the integrated reports of companies listed on the JSE stock exchanges is justified by two main reasons: 1) The obligation of the adoption of the Integrated Report for the companies listed on the JSE Stock Exchanges with the year ends between March 2011 and May 2011 (Period 1) and between June 2011 and September 2011 (Period 2); 2) The particular sensitivity found in the so called emerged countries about the Intellectual Capital disclosure (Abeysekera, 2008)