Manal Hussein Lafta & Ruaa Mustafa Kamil
The research is concerned with a very important phenomenon, which is the phenomenon of information overload as one of the concepts that must be taken into account when dealing with information. It is produced and presented to users, within the framework of the integrated reporting system and the accompanying integrated reports based on financial, environmental, social and governance information. This study requires presenting the intellectual structure of integrated reporting and determining the extent of its convergence in vision with the phenomenon of information overload. It was restricted to three dimensions to embody the intellectual structure of integrated reporting, represented by the following: • Intellectual foundations for integrated reporting • Integrated reporting goals • Integrated reporting requirements This intellectual structure includes many aspects or areas of information overload that contributes to creating the causes that lead to the emergence of the phenomenon of information overload and providing an appropriate environment for it. Also, because of the integrated reporting, it is embodied in a few axes represented by the financial, environmental, social and governance axis and these axes together will lead to providing information to the investor (and to users in general) that exceeds his ability to absorb due to its complexity, abundance and large size. This gives way to the emergence of indicators that confirm the presence of information overload, especially regarding the time factor required for the processing and assimilation of information by the user. In addition to what is related to the characteristics of information such as the level of ambiguity, uncertainty or complexity, aspects related to the user’s person regarding this information and its abundance, confusion and other areas are raised by the research.