MAMARONECK, N.Y., Nov. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Corporate citizenship reports make easy targets. Critics routinely dismiss them as little more than public relations fluff. Others attack their statistical claims. Where's the validation? Has an accounting firm certified the accuracy of the numbers?

General Electric Company has heard all those criticisms, and it has worked assiduously over the past decade to make its own citizenship report -- now in its fifth edition -- a serious working document.

To this end, the current report -- 2008 Citizenship Report: Resetting Responsibilities -- published in July 2009, offers broader and deeper data, much of it now posted online. It was also vetted by an outside panel of 'sustainability' experts.

A discussion of GE's ombuds office provides an example of the sort of detail now offered in such documents, Ethikos reports in its current issue. Not only does it report on the number and nature of the 1,672 'concerns' that arrived in the office in fiscal 2008, but it also details the 420 disciplinary actions taken in response to those reports. (See story at http://ethikosjournal.com/html/ge.html.)

Have corporate sustainability reports evolved in recent years? "The biggest change is that they are more real, more relevant, and more honest," Bob Corcoran, GE's vice president of corporate citizenship, tells Ethikos. Many of the early reports were full of "fluff"; they almost seemed like tools for campus recruiting, i.e., documents to convince job candidates that they would be joining a top-notch organization. That appears to be less the case today.

Take the ombuds data. As noted in the GE report: "The results of the 1,672 investigations in 2008 led directly to 420 disciplinary actions being taken, including 131 employee separations, 255 warnings, 13 job changes, and 21 financially impacted employees. Of the disciplinary actions, approximately 57 percent occurred outside the United States."

"People were very nervous about this" sort of thing initially, says Corcoran. But now the company feels positive about publishing it, he suggests.

Ethikos (www.EthikosJournal.com) is a bi-monthly publication that examines ethical and compliance issues in business. In its 23rd year, it takes a unique case-study approach to corporate ethics. Recent issues have included profiles of Coca Cola, Cisco, McDonald's, AOL, British Telecom, GM, and Novartis, among others. Go to http://ethikosjournal.com/html/selectedarticles.htm to see selected recent articles.

SOURCE: Ethikos (www.EthikosJournal.com)

SOURCE Ethikos

Back to top

RELATED LINKS
http://www.EthikosJournal.com