Integrated Reporting is having a profound impact on corporate thinking and reporting. Value is being assessed on the basis of the sources of value creation used by an organisation and not through a financial lens alone. In Chief Value Officer: Accountants Can Save the Planet, Mervyn King, a global corporate governance and reporting leader, challenges some of the systemic issues preventing organisations from managing in an integrated value-creation way.

The shareholder-centric governance model, currently favoured by most companies, will not result in changes to corporate behaviour that can create value in a sustainable manner. The book, therefore, firmly places the accountant in the position of changemaker – the finance professional today should be more of a value officer than a financial officer. Consequently, the Chief Finance Officer should be known as the Chief Value Officer.

This book explains this new approach. It encapsulates the essential reasons for adopting integrated reporting, explains its application to date and proposes the next steps needed to achieve change that will improve business, social and environmental sustainability.

A brand new book, `Chief Value Officer: Accountants Can Save the Planet' by Mervyn King with Jill Atkins (Greenleaf Publishing, December 2016), radically redefines the role of accountants.... This book is a rich source for the Globethics.net Ethics in Higher Education programme, demonstrating as it does how professions must and can be transformed into professions that create long term value for society. What is true for accountants, is true for engineers, economists, architects, doctors, and so on. * GlobalEthics.net *
Book review: Chief Value Officer – Accountants Can Save The Planet Certainly anyone interested in the communication of business information, in the widest sense, or who works in the field professionally, would benefit from reading this book. Currently, too much corporate information is given in coded, and often impenetrable, language that’s designed to meet the letter rather than the spirit of regulatory requirements. It would be refreshing if corporate performance were to begin being communicated in a way in which the layman could understand it. Perhaps integrated reporting is a step along the way; and the CVO acronym will one day become as well-known as CFO and COO, on the seas of the Pythons’ mythical wide Accountancy. -- Gerry Brown * International Investment *

MERVYN KING is Chairman of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and Chairman Emeritus of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). He is also Professor Extraordinaire at the University of South Africa.