Engagement & Decision Making

At GE, listening, reflecting and responding to our stakeholders are critical to informing our priorities for citizenship as well as for product development.

GE continually engages with customers, suppliers, regulators and collaborators all 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.

Citizenship

The integration of citizenship priorities into business strategy starts at the top. GE’s Board of Directors is responsible for overseeing how management serves the interests of shareowners and other stakeholders. The Board and its committees consider such issues as risk management; environmental, social and regulatory challenges; and global trends. Our corporate citizenship advisory panel plays a key role in providing external advice and challenges as we develop our approach to corporate citizenship and to particular issues of concern.

Additionally, GE engages with a wide range of stakeholders on an ongoing basis to seek their insights and opinions, which are often reflected in “Features” and “Perspectives.”

GE engages in a number of issue-specific, multi-stakeholder dialogues, focusing where we have significant influence and impact. One example, developed this year, has been our work on the problem of conflict minerals, with BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), together with NGOs and investor organizations. This year we also hosted a supplier summit in China, bringing together GE sourcing, EHS and quality staff with suppliers, peer companies and government representatives to discuss the challenges in securing better working conditions.

Product Development

Our “Session T” technology planning process draws on feedback from customers and business and technology leaders to develop ideas that lead to new or better products and address the needs of our customers and society.

Our advisory panels for ecomagination and healthymagination also challenge and sharpen our focus on innovation, driving the performance improvements of these programs.

The Internet and social media offer new opportunities to engage directly with stakeholders, respond to questions and invite feedback and collaboration. One example of this is the ecomagination Challenge—http://challenge.ecomagination.com—an open call to action for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students with breakthrough ideas on energy generation, distribution and utilization. Selected ecomagination Challenge entrants are offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE.

GE Supplier Summit in Shanghai, November 2010

Engaging and Reporting on Corporate Citizenship With GE Stakeholders in China

China is an important place for GE to do business, not only because of the size of its markets but also because of the role the country plays in addressing shared global challenges. GE’s supplier base in China has come a long way, but we still continue to identify significant issues. In November 2010, GE held a Supplier Summit in Shanghai, bringing together global Environment Health and Safety (EHS), sourcing quality and audit teams, peer companies and government officials to share experiences and discuss challenges in securing better working conditions.

In particular, they discussed the challenges and the limitations of auditing. The suppliers who attended the Summit shared with GE that one of the most helpful aspects of their engagement with the Company was the individual coaching, training and sharing of best practices with other suppliers on how and why to improve environmental efficiency and solve problems, rather than on simply how to pass an audit. Suppliers also highlighted the business benefits that resulted from this maturing approach to labor and environmental standards, including improved worker efficiency and morale, an enhanced reputation, and increased customer orders.

In November 2010, we also held a convening in Beijing to understand broader stakeholder expectations on CSR in China. It brought together experts from Chinese NGOs, think tanks, multinationals and state-owned companies. The key messages that we heard were that GE’s contribution to society in China is focused in the right places: bringing to market technologies for energy saving and affordable healthcare, building our own and our suppliers’ capacity to protect the local environment and the health and safety of people who make our products, controlling the intensity of water use and emissions in our own operations, and building the capacity for indigenous innovation through joint ventures and training.