Teaching Integrated Reporting: A French Experiment

By Professor Delphine Gibassier, Toulouse Business School

When I started teaching (during my PhD and after), the topic of teaching Social and Environmental Accounting related topics, such as environmental accounting, carbon accounting or integrated reporting was not easy to bring to (French) business schools. I was told business companies did not care, or that students could at most get “an introduction” because the topic was not on the chartered accountancy exam. While I was able to teach an optional course in carbon accounting in 2013 thanks to a SEA research-focused colleague, the door remained closed elsewhere.

Integrated reporting, however, raised the interest of my accounting colleagues. For some reason, it was easier to see through the connection between accounting and sustainability thanks to this new kind of reporting. 

In my institution, I introduced the topic through a conference to our accounting major students in 2014, with Carol Adams and Lisa French (from IIRC). After this introduction, I first taught integrated reporting during a 6-hour class in 2015. However, the topic was too complex to master in this short amount of time, and I was not pleased with the outcome. In 2016, there was the option to make a new 30-hour course, in English, in our department. I proposed to develop a new course on integrated reporting, and it was accepted. I proposed to Carol Adams teaching half of the class. She helped me developed the syllabus and brought her experience in building integrated reports in practice to the class. It was great to be able to gather both our experiences for the students to be close to practice. 

When I thought about how to best introduce a topic that is still “in the making”, with little practice, I decided to develop new teaching methods. First, I wanted to develop critical thinking. I launched a twitter challenge. Students had to look for 10 articles, view points etc. for and against integrated reporting. Then they had to tweet the link with # so that everyone would be able to look for the documents. After collecting the links from all the students, they had to write an essay, in groups, on what were the positive elements of the integrated reporting trend and what could be critiqued.

Second, I needed them to master key concepts of integrated report. For this, I used an existing case study (DBS: Journey to Integrated Reporting), and built another one on “materiality”.

Third, I decided to focus on the key accounting concept in integrated reports: “the capitals”. Since there is not “best practice” yet and that it is an “ongoing” practice, I decided to built a database of existing integrated reports. Instead of finding around 300 worldwide, I went to develop a 1300+integrated reports database. From this database, I extracted around 50 reports on “business models” (with capitals), natural capital, human/intellectual/social capitals, as well as a few that reported using stakeholder voices as focus. By groups, students had to develop their own analytical grid to decide what were the “best” integrated reports on “natural capital” for example, according to them. During the teaching hours, we discussed together what were the key criteria. They wrote a first presentation after the 30-hour seminar, a second version after 3 weeks, and a final version after another 2 weeks.

Example of analytical grids used:

Group 1	Group 2	Group 3
Connectivity Readability Completeness Materiality/Relevance Transparency Comparability Measurability	Conciseness Material issues Connectivity Standard KPIs (for each capital) Transparency and honesty: it's not only about identify strengths but also weaknesses Targets (to challenge and motivate management and allow comparison) Actions: Are we going to improve our weaknesses? Are we going to develop our strengths? How? Comparability (evolution past/today) Completeness Reliability	Materiality Key content Transparency Habilitation/certification Value chain Connectivity Temporality

All in all, the teaching was very much based on developing students’ own understanding of integrated reporting, while still mastering key concepts behind the idea of integrated reports. Moreover, it was a subtle way to introduce the fact that value is multifaceted, and that accounting has to develop other ways of accounting for it. Finally, students questioned the notion of “accountability” that is reported in integrated reports, looking at stakeholders to which the companies were “talking”, the use of assurance, materiality, and the absence of reporting on potential negative events.

Below some resources for teaching IR to your class.

Resources for teaching Integrated Reporting

Online resources:

Carol Adams’ blog: https://drcaroladams.net/ (over 56 resources on IR)

https://drcaroladams.net/just-released-the-iircs-2016-integrated-report-a-review/

https://drcaroladams.net/exploring-metaphors-of-capitals-and-the-framing-of-multiple-capitals-challenges-and-opportunities/

https://drcaroladams.net/six-capitals-v-the-triple-bottom-line/

https://drcaroladams.net/conceptualising-the-contemporary-corporate-value-creation-process/

Elaine Cohen’s blog: http://csr-reporting.blogspot.fr

http://csr-reporting.blogspot.fr/2016/11/the-missing-piece-of-materiality-puzzle.html

http://csr-reporting.blogspot.fr/2012/07/is-integrated-reporting-truly-integrated.html

http://csr-reporting.blogspot.fr/2017/08/materiality-from-meaningless-to.html 

Sustainable Brands Reporting 3.0 series:

Reporting 3.0: Global Common Good R&D Market Maker for a Regenerative & Distributive Economy

Reporting 3.0’s Reporting Blueprint: Triggering a Regenerative, Inclusive & Open Economy

How to Transform Today’s ‘Senseless’ ESG Data into Tomorrow’s Actionable Knowledge

Purpose + Context = Connectedness

Integration (Data Blueprint)

Definition of Overall Success (Reporting Blueprint)

Contextualization (Data Blueprint)

Securing Scalability (Reporting Blueprint)

Activation & Acceleration (Data Blueprint)

Conclusion

Databases with IR reports:

GRI (choose “integrated reports” to filter)

IIRC database

Corporate Register database of integrated reports

Content:

Look at the IIRC’s Competency Matrix

Case Studies:

1/ DBS: Journey to Integrated Reporting (from 2012)

2/ Danone, will be published at Ivey Publishing (available end of 2018, write me an email if you would like to be informed)

Our resources:

The detailed syllabus

The twitter challenge and essay

The capitals analysis exercise

The materiality mini case study

Example of our final exam

A Retrospective Musing on the Textbook in Social and Environmental Accounting

Reflections on Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Accounting for Society and the Environment by Rob Gray, Carol Adams and Dave Owen (London, Pearson), 2014

by Professor Rob Gray

I am very grateful to Ian (Thomson) and Colin (Dey) for the invitation to write for Colin’s blog on something that was starting to nibble away at the back of my mind. The “something” was a combination of the hoary old chestnut – whither academic social accounting? – and a related concern over the role(s) of substantive authored books within social accounting (and, in all probability, business and management more widely). Musing on the state of academic social accounting is nothing new but the need to get published in a few selected journals continues, it seems, to drive out wider and more natural curiosity about how the world works (or doesn’t work) and our place within it as social accounting academics and scholars more widely. (Robin Roberts’ contribution on the CSEAR blog touches on this). I worry if the inevitable and very practical advice to younger academics to leave wider reflections until after their PhD really means that they never get around to learning how to indulge in such reflection. Publication trumps pondering? Metrics trump musing? These inchoate firing of the aging synapses were stimulated by some recent chats about textbooks…. and, in particular, by a realisation that there are very few books offering wide-ranging views of social accounting. Moreover, the gap (hiatus perhaps) between Accounting and Accountability (1996) and Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014) of almost 20 years later was filled by neither neophytes nor old lags falling over themselves to make sense of this most wonderful and perplexing subject. (Apologies for the self-absorption that this perhaps reflects).  Of course there are the excellent collections from Jeffrey, Brendan and Jan and the somewhat more focused texts from, for example, Stefan (Schaltegger) or Stuart (Cooper) but none of these seek to offer a contesting and potentially comprehensive world view of the subject (in the way that, for example, Reg Mathews and, coincidentally, Bob Perks did in 1993 and Ralph Estes did in 1976).  Is there now no time for such creations? Is there perhaps no appetite for the production – or even consumption – of such things? Are attempts at overviews of a discipline impossible? over-ambitious? entirely unnecessary? 

These notions are cast into relief by having time to reflect upon the labour of (mostly) love that Dave, Carol and I undertook over far too many years to produce Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014). Whilst far from sitting back and waiting for the accolades, bouquets and plaudits to overwhelm us after the book was published at the start of 2014, we were somewhat puzzled by the apparent lack of response and its relatively low impact on citations. The text had been written for a number of reasons and it is perhaps salutary to suggest that maybe we have misjudged our community. That, as much as anything, promoted the following brief reprise on our collaborations.

In the 1980s when Dave and I were still in short pants and trying to get a grip on what was happening in accounting academe, there was virtually nothing on aspects of social accounting and any commitment to this area was met with howls of derision, fatherly advice to choose other paths and refusals to allow such sedition to take root in departments of “proper” accounting. Dave and I, linking up with Keith Maunders, set out to do two things. First, we wanted to try and satisfy ourselves that there was a thing worthy of the title social accounting and that it did have a substantive relationship with “real” accounting. Secondly, we wanted to show that this stuff could be taught as a (relatively) coherent and important programme. In effect, we want to proselytise and to champion this area as a worthy subject in and of itself.  The result was Corporate Social Reporting in 1987.

We got lucky. Rather to our surprise. there was a reasonable response to the book (reference the open-season that the crits declared on all things social accounting). Perhaps more significantly, (and even more to our surprise), the world also changed in about 1990 and the subject (but especially the “environmental” bit) suddenly became sexy. Environmental issues in accounting became almost ubiquitous and, as Dave remarked elsewhere, seemed to be drowning out the social issues of social accounting. Hence we determined to really try to step things up a bit (helped by Reg Mathews and Bob Perks) and try to produce a more nuanced and wide-ranging text. Accounting and Accountability (1996) was the result.

Accounting and Accountability, much to our delight, became a stalwart of the social accounting literature. It was very widely cited (great news) but very widely relied upon (not such good news it turns out).  The reasons for this uncharacteristic modesty lay in the book’s significant limitations: most notably the limited take on theory and the relatively narrow range of views incorporated and organisations embraced.  A victim of its own success, the book had been the best we had been able to produce at the time – given our still developing understandings - but its frequent citation as the last word on theories of and for social accounting theory was increasingly disturbing.

It took a long time, (for a lot of reasons), to produce Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014). This was our attempt to articulate a view and views of social accounting more substantively. It was even a bit of an apology for having been so naïve in places last time around.  Much wider in its embrace of the business and management literature, more nuanced (we hope) in its treatment of CSR and sustainability, and much more cognisant of both financial and organisational context, the text sought to offer a more comprehensive range of views, theories and understandings of social accounting.

But here’s the nub. The reaction to it has been extremely muted: indifferent even. The reviews, although excellent, have been few and far between. The citations take a while to pick up but remain scarce. Our reaction to this is far from sulky – simply a bit bemused. Has that boat sailed? Did we really miss the point? Or are textbooks of less and less interest perhaps? To repeat, the absence of any substantive texts in the intervening 20 years is perhaps significant.

I get to wondering about other areas of accounting – and, indeed, of business and management more widely.  With the pressure on journal publication and the absence of obvious tangible rewards for textbook writing is academe entering another phase in which shared knowledge and understanding is less important than a localised adherence to something approaching normal science? Are textbooks dead? Do you care? What do you think?

Thanks for reading this.

Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Accounting for Society and the Environment

Rob Gray, Carol Adams, Dave Owen

Jan 2014, Paperback, 360 pages
ISBN13: 9780273681380: ISBN10: 0273681389

http://www.pearsoned.co.uk/bookshop/detail.asp?item=100000000072808

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Would-be Environmental Accountant meets Mother Nature in a Pub: A Dialogue

By Guest Blogger Dr Jack Christian

Life is full of coincidences.  For years, I have been aware that I operate from a different worldview or metatheory than probably most other attendees at the annual CSEAR conferences.  At last week’s conference, I began to wonder how many other people might feel the same, so I asked Colin Dey (editor of the CSEAR blog) if I could publish this dialogue via the blog.  It is actually taken straight from my PhD thesis.  It is one of the chapters in fact.  My PhD was effectively an investigation into the worldviews of people who, in some way or another, account for nature.  My aim in putting it on the blog is to show how my own worldview has been/is being constructed, and maybe get some response about why others choose to work in the SEA paradigm.

The coincidence is that in the last session of the conference, Rob Gray spoke about the various worldviews held by CSEAR attendees, and his concern that these worldviews are never made explicit.  He saw this as a problem, if we did not fully understand each other we could not work together to achieve our generally shared goals.

My hope in attaching my dialogue to the CSEAR blog is that it will encourage others to investigate and share their own worldviews and make for greater understanding among our community.

The whole dialogue is quite long (20,000 words) - however, it is made up of five Acts and so it is possible to dip into each one individually.  Each Act is shown separately on my own blog, the first of which can be found at https://jackchristian4sl.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/would-be-environmental-accountant-meets-mother-nature-in-a-pub-a-dialogue-act-one/.  I also list the writers and thinkers who helped me build my worldview in my blog.


THE CHARACTERS

Mother Nature                                                   Mr Commerce
Professor Science                                              Religious Man
Young Englishman                                             Soren Kierkegaard
Martin Heidegger                                             Unidentified Frenchman
Librarian Lady                                                  Young German
Carl Gustav Jung                                              Friederich Nietzsche
Psychologist Lady                                             Ecopsychologist
Arne Naess                                                        The Romantic
Michel Foucault                                                American Academic 1
American Academic 2                                       Geographern the CSEAR 
Sociologist                                                        Policy Maker
Angry Voice                                                       Reconciliatory Voice


Introduction

Our hero, an ex-management accountant, has recently read stories of environmental management accounting and despite many years in the field of management accounting he has never heard of, let alone witnessed, this phenomenon.  He is now on a journey to find what people mean when they refer to accounting and to the environment and, indeed, what he means.

In the course of this journey he now finds himself in a large dimly-lit hostelry which has one large reception lounge in which guests can congregate.  It is an ‘Open-Mic’ night with a ‘Nature’ theme. Would be minstrels are playing songs, reciting poetry and telling tales.  A fire burns in a hearth to the side of the bar, away from the bar and the hearth the room gets progressively darker.  In the darkness there are an indistinguishable but seemingly large number of tables, most of which are occupied.  


LIST OF ACTS

Act One - Who am I and what can I know?
Act Two - Deep ecology and belief systems
Act Three - Exploring the limitations of science
Act Four - Knocking at the foundations of capitalism
Act Five - The nature of nature