Integrated reporting (IR, or <IR> in International Integrated Reporting Council publications) in corporate communication is a "process that results in communication, most visibly a periodic “integrated report”, about value creation over time. An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization's strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term."

It means the integrated representation of a company's performance in terms of both financial and other value relevant information. Integrated Reporting provides greater context for performance data, clarifies how valuable relevant information fits into operations or a business, and may help make company decision making more long-term. While the communications that result from IR will be of benefit to a range of stakeholders, they are principally aimed at providers of financial capital allocation decisions.

IR helps to complete financial and sustainability reports. A framework has been published, but some questions remain in order to know how to apply it. Do we need a new report? Do we need one report ? Will this report be useful for investors, and for other stakeholders? Other questions could have been raised, such as who is really working for an integrated reporting, and who has interests in it.

In June 2021, the International Integrated Reporting Council and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board announced their combination to form the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF). In November 2021, the IFRS Foundation announced it would consolidate the VRF and Climate Disclosure Standards Board with its own newly formed International Sustainability Standards Board by June 2022.

Capitalism relies on the efficient allocation of capital to deliver returns to investors over the short, medium and long term. It is the job of companies to manage the financial capital that investors provide and also to create and preserve the value generated from other forms of non-financial data such as people, trademarks/copyrights and natural resources or nature, the basis of all life. The western model of capitalism has been questioned following the onset of the banking crisis in 2007 because of its apparent dependence on short-term financial factors over other forms of capital and longer time scales. Corporate reporting no longer reflects the needs of the 21st century, resilient capitalism needs financial stability and sustainability in its exchange with nature in order to succeed – and Integrated Reporting is intended to underpin both of these problems through communicating to providers of financial capital the information that they need. Therefore, a report of financial data is no longer sufficient, but has to be extended with information about our exchanges with nature, as money is not natural, but a 7,000 year old cultural invention. Nature has never invented a means for its exchanges.

At the heart of IR is the growing realization that a wide range of factors determine the value of an organization – some of these are financial or tangible in nature and are easy to account for in financial statements (e.g. property, cash), while many such as intellectual capital, competition and energy security are not. IR reflects the broad and longer-term consequences of the decisions organizations make, based on a wide range of factors, in order to create and sustain value. IR enables an organization to communicate in a clear, articulate way how it is drawing on all the resources and relationships it utilises to create and preserve value in the short, medium and long term, helping investors to manage risks and allocate resources most efficiently.

It is therefore seen as necessary to expand the reporting of only financial data with ecological data, for example about the greenhouse gas emissions that a company generates. In accordance with the 2015 Paris climate agreement, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced, hence reporting on such progress within the main accounts is useful in providing accountability. Integrated Reporting therefore needs two sides, the financial balancing data as well the non-financial ecological data, it must aim at two achievements: annual financial profit per as well as profit for nature, e.g. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2009, the Prince of Wales convened a high-level meeting of investors, standard setters, companies, accounting bodies and UN representatives including The Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project, International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), to establish the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC), a body to oversee the creation of a globally accepted Integrated Reporting framework. In November 2011, the Committee was renamed the International Integrated Reporting Council.