'Integrated reporting and sustainability go hand in hand'.
| Author | Babber, Gulzari |
| Position | A word from the president |
CIMA members can play a pivotal role in overcoming the challenges faced by the business world. This message has begun to be widely understood and was emphasised by Peter Bakker, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, who has raised it at the Rio+20 conference and elsewhere.
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Indeed, at one conference last summer, Bakker made every accountant in the room stand up. He then said they could all make a difference by ensuring that sustainability became more measurable and tangible through integrated reporting. It is gratifying that integrated reporting is being discussed in these terms.
CIMA maintains that sustainable business development and integrated reporting go hand in hand. This was underscored in the speech I recently gave at CIMA Canada's excellent conference on business and sustainability. Organisations in both the public and private sectors cannot develop effective, sustainable strategies unless they clearly understand and record the links between their strategy, governance and financial performance and the social, environmental and economic context within which they operate.
CIMA has been working hard to drive home the benefits of integrated reporting and this work was commended by Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, and my guest of honour at this year's president's dinner in October, where I presented him with a CIMA honorary fellowship. At the dinner, Paul also noted that CIMA's heritage lay in pioneering modern management accounting for the manufacturing age. And he pointed out that the institute now has a major role to play in pioneering a new age of business sustainability.
Another key skill that CIMA members can offer in terms of driving sustainable business success is effective performance management. This is the topic of the current CGMA innovation theme. As part of the programme, the institute celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Balanced Scorecard in November by inviting its creators, Professor Robert Kaplan and Dr David Norton, to receive honorary fellowships at a special ceremony. This included fireworks and a scorecard-shaped birthday cake. The two performance management gurus said modestly...
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