An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization's strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term.
While the communications that result from IR will be of benefit to a range of stakeholders, they are principally aimed at providers of financial capital allocation decisions.
IR reflects the broad and longer-term consequences of the decisions organizations make, based on a wide range of factors, in order to create and sustain value.
The IIRC calls itself 'a global coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard setters, the accounting profession and NGOs.
It states its mission is to create the globally accepted International IR Framework that elicits from organizations material information about their strategy, governance, performance and prospects in a clear, concise and comparable format.
It also concluded that the primary audience of integrated reports is investors in order to aid their allocation of financial capital.
The IIRC began a Pilot Programme in 2011 in order to underpin the development of the International Integrated Reporting Framework.
The IIRC was created with the remit of developing the globally accepted International IR Framework that elicits from organizations material information about their strategy, governance, performance and prospects in a clear, concise and comparable format.
The benefits of the Framework are purported to be the enabling of informed decision-making that leads to efficient capital allocation and the creation and preservation of value.
[36] Corporate reporting on financial and non-financial information in a single document has grown as companies such as BlackSun[37] have produced research[38] which suggests that producing integrated reports will have a strong correlation to the resilience and ability of a business to create value in the short, medium and long term.
On 1 March 2010 the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)[39] adopted the King III principles as part of its listing requirements, which require listed companies to apply King III or explain which recommendations have not been applied and publicly provide reasons therefore.