Constructing ExxonMobil's First Integrated Report: An Experiment

Abstract

While interest in integrated reporting is growing, the number of listed companies issuing such reports remains a very small minority. Common concerns expressed by companies include complexity, cost, and litigation risk. To address these concerns, we decided to conduct an experiment answering the question of “Is it possible and, if so, how difficult would it be to construct an integrated report for a company based on information from documents the company has placed in the public domain?” For our experiment we chose ExxonMobil. We were able to construct a decent integrated report for the year 2016 in about 40 hours. This suggests that the concerns companies have about integrated reporting are exaggerated. We are working to develop an “Integrated Report Generator Tool (IRGT)” that will use natural language processing and artificial intelligence technologies to produce an integrated report for any listed company in the world. These reports would be freely available. If we are successful in developing such a tool, an interim technology solution will solve the problem of the dearth of integrated reports. Ideally, these freely available integrated reports will encourage companies to produce their own.