SOUTH AFRICAN ASSESSMENT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
As South African companies began practicing integrated reporting and issuing integrated reports, the Big Four accounting firms began to study them to identify trends and best practices. After the first mandatory integrated reporting season on an apply or explain basis concluded for 2011, Ernst & Young (E&Y) South Africa published a short report, "Integrated Reporting Survey Results," examining 25 companies listed on the JSE to interpret their understanding of integrated reporting and its perceived benefits and challenges.56 The next year, the firm began to publish its annual "Excellence in Integrated Reporting" awards as a way to improve best practices by providing special scrutiny of the top 100 companies in terms of market capitalization. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) followed suit, analyzing the top 100 companies listed on the JSE in the period after March 1, 2 011, in the second full reporting season after the third King Report on Governance was released, and its analysis even contained screenshots of successful integrated report sections' layouts.57 From 2011 to 2013, Deloitte and KPMG conducted similar surveys, publishing their results along with white papers reiterating the business case for integrated reporting, clarifying best practices, and addressing ongoing challenges. Local accounting firm Nkonki also began to produce an annual awards program covering the largest listed companies.58
Other organizations got involved in reflecting on the South African experience as well. For example, the University of Pretoria's Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership collaborated with E&Y South Africa to interview 16 thought leaders, some of whom had been involved for over two decades in corporate governance and corporate reporting, lending nuance to the accounting firms' quantitative assessment of South Africa's integrated reporting experience.59 Chartered Secretaries Southern Africa undertook an annual awards program for integrated reports. The IRC of SA began to release the results of a survey of the top 100 companies listed on the JSE covering general areas, such as the size of the reports. While one can assume that things have progressed in the past year since these reports were published, below we consider trends indicated by the most recent reports and surveys available at the time of this writing.
Report Quality
While Deloitte identified "pockets of excellence," the consensus among the Big Four remained that no one company could be indicated as exemplary in all aspects of integrated reporting.60 Companies were increasingly engaging with sustainability issues, but there was no overall "Poster Child" Integrated Report due to, among other factors, the lack of definitive reporting guidance. Deloitte's 2012 report alone identified 15 potentially relevant frameworks, regulations, and standards61 relevant to the process. It also addressed such issues as fear of disclosing competitive information related to strategy, board governance, how director remuneration was determined, and overall adjustment of internal controls, assurance, and data collection. Although the E&Y survey respondents demonstrated a solid understanding of the definition of an integrated report and the information it should represent, with all respondents agreeing that an integrated report was not simply a cross-reference between annual and sustainability reports, few disclosed these interdependencies in a useful manner.62
Overall, the following trends were indicated by most of the accounting firms: companies that had not embraced integrated reporting would become isolated; clear ways of telling the company narrative were improving, and companies relied more on visual storytelling and graphics than before; stakeholders were dealt with in greater detail in the reports; and companies were increasingly embedding sustainability issues into their business models. While KPMG estimated it would take up to three years for integrated reporting to become a fully established way of reporting business strategy and performance, the length of the journey depended entirely on a company's commitment to the spirit of King III in general and integrated reporting in particular. In some cases, companies were adopting a "tick-the-box" mentality to integrated reporting and simply outsourcing the production of the report to their audit firm or other consultants at a cost perceived to be high by the companies.
