Integrated Approach to Value Creation: a Study of European Companies

This study explores integrated thinking and its reflection - integrated reporting. The work discusses the impact of the quality of integrated reporting on value creation and uses panel data regression analysis to evaluate it. In the first chapter we collected and analyzed theoretical and empirical work related to integrated reporting. First of all, opinions in the scientific literature about integrated reporting were considered. Possible determinants were also described: how and why companies come to the decision to implement these Standards. Finally, work on the effects of integrated reporting was analysed. Many studies have looked at them in terms of the impact of the transition to integrated reporting standards or the quality of these reports on performance typically related to the efficiency or cost of a company. The second chapter contains an empirical study. The main feature of the chosen method of assessing the quality of reporting is the method of digitizing quality data - the content of reports. For this purpose, 10 criteria were selected, according to which points were placed for each of 168 reports (observations for 28 companies between 2013 and 2018), from which 3 independent variables - Strategic Focus, Connectivity and Materiality - were formed. As a result of the study, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis about the significant impact of the quality of integrated reporting on the cost of European companies, as well as to confirm the significant positive impact of the selected characteristics of integrated reports - connectivity of information, materiality and strategic focus of information in the report. This will allow companies that decide to implement integrated reporting to be more responsible in their quality in understanding the significant impact on cost, as well as to be guided by the selected characteristics in their preparation.