The degree to which corporations should also benefit society—corporate social responsibility—is a much debated topic, but giant GE has expressed firmly what it believes. It's a citizen of the world, and people have a right to understand how the business thinks about and acts upon on such topics as greenhouse gas emissions, offshoring, and globalization.
That's the message in the company's first "On Citizenship" report issued in mid-May, which aims to provide transparency on these and other issues. The seventy-eight-page document, available from the GE Web site in pdf format, will become a widely studied (and debated) model for how companies report their CSR programs.
If you don't want to download the whole document, you can go to the company's Citizenship Web page (see URL given above) and download the sections that you are interested in: Governance; Compliance; Public Policy; Environment, Health, and Safety; Globalization; Community; Customers, Products, and Services; Suppliers; Investors; Employees; Our Commitment; and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Index.
As a marketing document, you won't find much here that reflects badly on the company. Even when the document notes that 368 disciplinary actions were taken against GE employees over integrity issues in 2004, it is also quick to point out that "the rising rates of concerns is a sign of our healthy integrity and compliance culture."
So in the end, the company's critics aren't likely to find much ammunition here, but investors will come away with a better understanding of GE's own view of its role as world citizen.