Global Themes

Our Principles

Our framework for responsible corporate citizenship remains simple: make money, make it ethically and make a difference.

Each year, as we evolve our reporting in corporate citizenship, we aim to determine and clarify the scope of GE’s material impacts. Our citizenship and reporting priorities are informed by broad engagement with stakeholders across the GE businesses and the communities where we work. Over the past few years, reflecting on these dialogues, our citizenship reports have explored the major trends that are changing the world and defining our business environment. This year, we have moved beyond this outside-in approach to an inside-out approach that aims to more clearly articulate how GE’s strategy is responding to the challenges and opportunities we face.

Our Strategy

GE’s corporate citizenship strategy is defined by the two key pillars of energy and climate change and sustainable healthcare, underpinned by a foundation of operational excellence in the way we do business.

These are the four areas that we identify as crucial both to growing our business and contributing to the growth of healthy societies in which we can do business. GE provides the infrastructure, technology and financing to underpin cleaner, greener prosperity and sustainable healthcare, but we also contribute to building the capacity to implement and develop these technologies. This starts with the way that GE builds the capacity of our own teams, and extends to the way we work in partnership with other businesses, governments and civil society organizations to invest in the enabling foundations that our business and societies need to thrive. All this is grounded in a robust approach to operational excellence in the way we manage our business to drive growth and manage risk effectively, coupled with our commitment to compliance and first-class environment, health and safety in our operations around the globe.

For GE, corporate citizenship means business. This is reflected in our belief that “green is green” and “health is wealth,” summed up by our ecomagination and healthymagination strategies, respectively. In some cases we can assess the return on investment directly. For example, ecomagination generated $18 billion of product revenue in 2009, while energy efficiency initiatives have saved GE approximately $100 million since our focus began in 2005. While it is harder to measure, we are convinced that our commitment to compliance and transparency and our long-term dedication to our people pay dividends in terms of trust, reputation and relationships.

Conversely, we know that systemic problems—ranging from skill gaps in education to systemic health problems and poorly enforced laws—hinder our productivity as well as the broader competitiveness of nations. Wherever these kinds of persistent problems endure, it is precisely because there is no effective “business case” mobilizing the resources, influence and talents needed to solve them and create better human impacts. Solving these societal issues means negotiating shared responsibilities among many parties. Insisting on early and clear return on investment can restrain this very process. In the end, the return on investment for corporate citizenship is a world fit to live in, do business in, and hand down to our children—and this requires long-term commitment.

The impact of successful corporate citizenship comes from driving the conversations (with employees, customers, regulators, competitors and markets) needed to catalyze systemic change. Turning corporate citizenship at this level into an accounting exercise linked to profit and loss calculations is wrong—it is a waste of time and a mistaken concept from the very beginning. However, we do manage specific activities and programs with outcome-driven business discipline, using rigorous metrics and transparency. Where we are working in partnerships towards shared priorities, this means developing shared metrics of progress rather than attempting individual attribution of outcomes and impacts.

Our Engagement

GE regularly engages with our customers, suppliers, regulators and collaborators around the world. This happens in our engagements with industry bodies and high-level summits, in our investor meetings and in our everyday conversations between our sales teams and customers.

Stakeholder engagement informs our product development. For example, our “Session T” technology planning process draws on feedback from customers and business and technology leaders to develop ideas for new or better products. As part of this Session T process, in 2009, GE convened a summit around the Smart Grid, which integrates 21st-century technology with the 20th-century power grid. The summit brought together GE leaders from across the various businesses to explore how GE products and services could help the power grid become more energy efficient.

Stakeholder engagement helps us to continually develop our approach to corporate citizenship. This means engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, some of whom are reflected in the “open perspectives” featured in this report. Our corporate citizenship advisory panel and ecomagination and healthymagination advisory boards also play a key role here in challenging and sharpening our vision.

GE contributes to the local and international policy debate on shaping sustainable healthcare and low-carbon economies. Through our founding role in the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) and involvement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are engaged in an ongoing, solutions-oriented dialogue about the United States, China, India and Brazil to help shape markets that reward responsibility.