Impact of Integrated Reporting on Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from staggered Indian Listed firms

Abstract

Integrated Reporting (IR) connects financial and non-financial disclosures to explain how organizations create value over time.  This study objectively examines whether first-time IR adoption is associated with changes in operating financial performance among Indian listed firms. The research tools and data cover the firm-year accounting data for FY2014–FY2025, are compiled from Screener.in and matched with firm-specific IR adoption years identified from investor-relations annual report archives. The technique implemented, is staggered-adoption difference-in-differences design, estimating firm- and year-fixed effects models for Operating ROA, operating margin and asset turnover, and complement them with an event-study specification and a group-time average treatment effect estimator that uses not-yet-treated firms as comparators. The findings of IR adoption are associated with a modest improvement in Operating ROA (approximately 1.6 percentage points in the baseline fixed-effects model). Asset turnover is positive in pre–post window comparisons but less precisely estimated in the baseline regression, while operating margins show limited change.  The Implications lead the evidence of consistent format with IR, which linked to incremental operating-efficiency that gains in large Indian adopters. The inference is constrained by voluntary adoption, a small treated sample and the difficulty of separating adoption timing from reporting quality. The study concludes that IR voluntary adoption can achieve better performance of the Indian listed firms.