New Delhi, May 17 -- It's that time of the year when annual reports of corporate entities start streaming out. Profits will be dissected, share prices will rise or tumble, and catchphrases like value and growth will be thrown around. But what about purpose? What about the larger social and ecological footprint of a company? Caught up in a season of fourth quarter results, it is worth remembering the words of Mervyn King, a celebrated academic and a former judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. "Quarterly reporting drives short-term thinking . . . (and) short-term capitalism has failed," he said. "When you lose trust and confidence in the company, value is destroyed very quickly." King is the father of a radical new way of reporting a corporate entity's performance- in fact his approach came to be termed as "King Reports" (in the 1990s). And a small number of Indian businesses are turning their annual reports into integrated reports, jumping on board a progressive vision which first took root among companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Essentially, the heart of the idea behind an integrated report is this: mere financial reporting is no longer enough. Measuring an organization's growth purely in terms of economic and financial value creation is a siloed and obsolete world view. Tata Steel Ltd was one of the earliest integrated report adopters in India, with its first integrated report in 2015-16. In 2017, the firm's report was declared as "Asia's Best Integrated Report" by the Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards. Businesses, after all, need to make money and register profits to sustain. So, what is the connection between financial growth and impacting socio-environmental change, if at all? Or is it a hyped up esoteric concept to move large organizations to do good and for society-at-large to feel better? Take an industry example-insurance, for instance, which is a key part of any financial system. Globally, insurance companies manage over $30 trillion in assets, act as important guardians of wealth, and, in a lot of ways, fuel economic growth. The recent special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the estimated net present value of damages from a 2degreeC of warming is expected to be around $64 trillion by 2100. This may be just a small indication of what the future may hold. You possibly cannot be the sufferer from and an investor in the same businesses! Globally, asset managers are recognizing that financial returns and impact outcomes can go together and are increasingly embracing sustainable investing as a business building approach. Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of BlackRock Inc., the largest money-management firm in the world, in a letter to the CEOs of S&P 500 companies and large European organizations had stated: "One reason for investors' short-term horizons is that companies have not sufficiently educated them about the ecosystems they are operating in, what their competitive threats are, and how technology and other innovations are impacting their businesses." According to the World Investment Report 2018, about 50% of the funds in developed economies such as Europe and Australia factor in environment, social and governance practices for sound investment. In Asia, merely one per cent of the funds do so. To facilitate such decision-making, organizations need to put in place reporting frameworks that investors and other stakeholders can draw upon. ...