Quick Comparison
| Integrated Reporting (IR) | GRI | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Value creation across six capitals over time | Sustainability impacts — economic, environmental, social |
| Applicability | Any organization; widely adopted by listed companies | Any organization, any sector, any size |
| Required/Voluntary | Voluntary (mandatory in South Africa for JSE-listed companies) | Voluntary |
| Geography | Global, strongest adoption in South Africa, Japan, and parts of Europe | Global, strongest in Europe and emerging markets |
| Key Focus | Concise, connected reporting on how an organization creates value | Comprehensive disclosure of sustainability impacts |
| Assurance | Encouraged; combined assurance approach recommended | Encouraged, not required |
What is Integrated Reporting?
The International Integrated Reporting Framework, originally developed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), provides principles for organizations to communicate how they create, preserve, or erode value over time. The framework is structured around six capitals — financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and relationship, and natural — and asks organizations to explain how their business model transforms inputs into outputs and outcomes across these capitals.
The IIRC merged with SASB to form the Value Reporting Foundation in 2021, which was subsequently consolidated into the IFRS Foundation in 2022. The Integrated Reporting Framework is now maintained by the IFRS Foundation alongside ISSB standards. The framework has been particularly influential in South Africa, where the Johannesburg Stock Exchange requires integrated reports, and in Japan, where hundreds of companies voluntarily produce integrated reports.
Integrated Reporting is principles-based and concise by design. It does not prescribe specific metrics or data points. Instead, it asks organizations to explain their strategy, governance, performance, and outlook in a connected narrative that helps investors and other stakeholders understand the business model and its sustainability over time. The eight guiding principles include strategic focus, connectivity of information, stakeholder relationships, materiality, conciseness, reliability, and consistency.
What is GRI?
The Global Reporting Initiative provides comprehensive, modular sustainability reporting standards used by over 10,000 organizations worldwide. GRI's impact materiality approach requires organizations to report on their most significant effects on the economy, environment, and people. The framework includes Universal Standards, Topic Standards, and emerging Sector Standards.
GRI reporting tends to be detailed and data-rich, providing specific disclosure requirements for topics ranging from emissions and water to labor practices, human rights, and anti-corruption. Organizations use GRI to demonstrate accountability to diverse stakeholders through transparent disclosure of their sustainability performance and impacts.
Key Differences
1. Conceptual Foundation
Integrated Reporting is rooted in value creation — how does the organization create value for itself and its stakeholders over the short, medium, and long term? GRI is rooted in impact accountability — what are the organization's most significant effects on people and the environment? These are related but distinct lenses. Value creation is inherently organization-centered; impact materiality is inherently world-centered.
2. Scope of Content
Integrated Reporting covers the entire business model across six capitals, including financial and intellectual capital alongside social and natural capital. GRI covers sustainability impacts specifically — economic, environmental, and social. GRI does not address financial capital or intellectual capital as standalone topics; Integrated Reporting does not provide the depth of environmental or social disclosure that GRI offers.
3. Principles vs Prescriptions
The Integrated Reporting Framework is principles-based, providing guiding principles and content elements without specifying metrics. GRI Standards are prescriptive, specifying exactly what to disclose for each material topic — specific quantitative metrics, management approach descriptions, and contextual information. An integrated report explains; a GRI report demonstrates.
4. Conciseness vs Comprehensiveness
Integrated Reporting explicitly values conciseness — reports should be focused and avoid immaterial detail. GRI values comprehensiveness — reports should cover all material topics with sufficient depth for stakeholders to assess performance. These opposing design principles produce very different documents. Integrated reports are typically 50-100 pages of connected narrative; GRI-aligned sustainability reports can run 150-300+ pages.
5. Audience
Integrated Reporting primarily targets providers of financial capital — investors, lenders — while acknowledging value for other stakeholders. GRI targets a multi-stakeholder audience including employees, communities, regulators, civil society, and consumers. The audience difference shapes the communication style: Integrated Reporting emphasizes strategic narrative; GRI emphasizes data transparency.
6. Connectivity and Integration
The Integrated Reporting Framework emphasizes connectivity — showing how different factors combine and interact in the value creation process. How does human capital investment affect innovation? How do environmental risks threaten manufactured capital? GRI reports are organized by topic and tend to present sustainability issues in discrete sections rather than through interconnected narrative.
Which One Do You Need?
Use Integrated Reporting if you want to communicate your business model and value creation story in a concise, connected format primarily for investors and the board. IR is particularly valuable for organizations that want to demonstrate how sustainability is embedded in strategy rather than reported as a separate exercise.
Use GRI if you need comprehensive, data-driven sustainability reporting for diverse stakeholders, want to meet regulatory expectations in jurisdictions referencing GRI (particularly the EU under ESRS), or need a structured framework with specific metrics to drive internal data collection.
Use both if you're a large organization that needs to communicate with both investor and multi-stakeholder audiences. Many companies produce an integrated report for their annual reporting cycle and a detailed GRI-aligned sustainability report as a companion document.
Can You Use Both?
Yes, and they complement each other well. The Integrated Reporting Framework provides the strategic narrative — how sustainability issues connect to the business model and value creation. GRI provides the detailed evidence — specific metrics, data points, and disclosures that substantiate the narrative. Many organizations use the Integrated Report as their primary communication piece and reference a full GRI report for stakeholders who need granular data.
The IFRS Foundation's consolidation of both the Integrated Reporting Framework and ISSB standards under one roof supports this integrated approach. The concept of "connected information" central to Integrated Reporting aligns with ISSB's requirement for connectivity between sustainability and financial disclosures.
Council Fire's Perspective
Integrated Reporting changed how boards think about sustainability — not as a compliance exercise, but as a core element of value creation. That conceptual contribution is enormously valuable. But in practice, organizations need GRI's specificity to operationalize sustainability reporting — you can't improve what you don't measure, and Integrated Reporting doesn't tell you what to measure.
We recommend clients use the Integrated Reporting mindset to shape their sustainability narrative and board communication, while using GRI (or ESRS, for EU-scope entities) to build the data infrastructure. The integrated report tells the story; the GRI report provides the evidence. Organizations that try to do detailed sustainability reporting through the Integrated Reporting Framework alone end up with documents that are neither concise enough to serve investors nor detailed enough to satisfy other stakeholders.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Integrated Reporting still relevant with the ISSB?
Yes. The IFRS Foundation maintains both the Integrated Reporting Framework and ISSB standards. They serve different but complementary purposes — the IR Framework provides principles for holistic corporate reporting, while ISSB provides specific sustainability disclosure standards. ISSB's emphasis on connectivity between sustainability and financial information draws directly from Integrated Reporting concepts.
Can an integrated report satisfy GRI requirements?
Not typically. Integrated reports are concise by design and rarely contain the level of quantitative detail GRI requires. However, an integrated report can reference a separate GRI report for detailed disclosures, creating a two-tier communication system. Some organizations include a GRI Content Index in their integrated report linking to detailed data in supplementary documents.
How does Integrated Reporting handle materiality?
Integrated Reporting uses a concept of materiality focused on matters that substantively affect the organization's ability to create value over time. This is closer to financial materiality than GRI's impact materiality, though it considers value creation for stakeholders, not just shareholders. The materiality determination process involves identifying relevant matters, evaluating their importance, and prioritizing those most likely to affect value creation.
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