Abstract This study systematically reviews the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and integrated reporting (IR) across institutional contexts. Although prior research has examined IR and its determinants, evidence on the governance–reporting relationship remains fragmented across governance dimensions, institutional settings and methodological approaches. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, the review synthesises 47 empirical studies published between 2013 and 2025 and indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. The findings show that the relationship between CG and IR is neither uniform nor consistently positive, but varies across governance mechanisms, institutional conditions and reporting contexts. The evidence base is heavily concentrated in developing economies, where studies examine a broad range of board, director, ownership, committee and audit-related mechanisms but report heterogeneous and context-dependent findings. Evidence from developed economies remains limited and focuses on a narrower range of governance attributes, preventing a symmetrical comparison between the two settings. The review also reveals a strong reliance on quantitative designs and conventional theoretical perspectives, particularly agency, stakeholder, and legitimacy theories, while qualitative and mixed-methods approaches and alternative theoretical frameworks remain underused. The methodological quality assessment identifies further limitations, including weak treatment of endogeneity and substantial variation in the operationalisation of IR, which constrain causal inference and cross-study comparability. The study contributes by providing a structured, multi-level synthesis of governance mechanisms, advancing an institutionally grounded understanding of the CG–IR relationship and identifying key theoretical, methodological and empirical gaps. Overall, the findings indicate that the relationship between CG and IR depends not only on the presence of governance mechanisms, but also on the institutional conditions that support their effective operation.
Zamri et al. (Mon,) studied this question.