Recently, Integrated

Reporting has been receiving immense attention from the public.

Under , companies provide more information on the broader health of the organisations

and the challenges and opportunities they face in the future (forward-

looking information),

rather than focusing on analysing past financial results. This includes more focus on active

governance, reso

urce use and exposure, strategic performance, and management of material

risk to create and preserve value. This

information

is supposed to enhance shareholders'

understanding of the firm (Simnett and Huggins, 2015; KPMG and Financial Executives

Research F

oundation

2011). Some studies (e.g. Lee and Yeo, 2016, Zhou, Simnett and Green,

2017; Barth, Cahan, Chen and Venter, 2017) show that firms valuation is positively associated

with disclosure, but these analyses are mainly based on data from South Africa, because

only firms in South Africa are required to issue integrated report mandatorily. Prior studies in

other countries are therefore sparse. Recently, firms in Australia are voluntarily starting to

report non-

financial and non-

quantitative information

in financial statements and more than

40% of Australia's biggest 200 companies are currently using the principles of in their

annual reports in 2018. This shows that there must be some benefits associated with in

the Australian context.

Now s

uppose that you are working on a project related to how market participants in Australia

benefit from integrated reporting, when compared to traditional financial statements.

Specifically, please develop a research proposal that analyses the nature of info

rmation

included in and examines how one participant in the market (e.g. shareholders, managers,

auditors, regulators, financial intermediaries, etc.) benefit from the additional information

provided through . You need to select your one variable of interest for this research.

Possible variables include, but not limit to, accounting performance, stock performance, audit

fees, analysts following, etc.

The research proposal should include the following structure:

1.

An

introduction and background

You need to state your research question clearly in the introduction.

Background information should include motivation for conducting this research.

2.

A literature review on voluntary engagement of integrated reporting

. Your literature review should provide evidence that you have

carefully examined the academic refereed articles (

altogether at least 3 + 3 = 6

articles

), understand them, and have been able to summarise the essential content by

integrating them into your own arguments and perspective.

3.

Development of hypotheses

. After reviewing the existing literature, you need to

identify some important research gap and

how possible findings of your study could

fill this gap. You have to provide logical/ theoretical reasoning to develop your

hypothesis. The hypothesis has to be developed along the lines of examining the

relationship between voluntary assurance of sustainability reports and your variables

3 | Page

of interest.

4.

Research methods

/

design

, including

a.

sources of information to be used to gather relevant data

b.

sampling techniques

c.

definition of variables (dependent, independent and some relevant control

variables) to be used in the models

d.

models to be used to examine the hypothesis/ hypotheses

5.

Conclusions

emphasising potential

implications

6.

References