The Aitken Spence Approach to Integrated Reporting

Abstract

Aitken Spence is a diversified blue-chip conglomerate in Sri Lanka and a reputed leader in corporate sustainability. This chapter provides a closer look at the journey of Aitken Spence from sustainability reporting (SR) to integrated reporting. The company embraced a strategic and systemic approach early on to manage its environmental, social and economic impacts and to create and retain sustainable value for all its stakeholders through measurable, proactive efforts implemented to monitor the trade-off of capitals. These efforts include monitoring, measuring and disclosing information about the company’s non-financial performance in the company’s annual report. The company has established frameworks to disclose how different capitals are used in these efforts, as well as to highlight their performance against targets. From the outset, the company benchmarked these efforts to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s reporting framework and incorporated non-financial information into the company's financial reports, without publishing a separate report for sustainability information. With the introduction of integrated reporting guidelines in 2010 by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), Aitken Spence commenced its journey towards aligning the company’s annual reports to integrated reports in the 2012/2013 financial year, making it one of the first companies in Sri Lanka to make a shift towards integrated reporting. This chapter presents an overview of how integrated reporting has helped the company to demonstrate the use of available capitals in business operations to manage impacts while creating and retaining value.