GE Rated Aaa on Sustainability Performance by Two Tomorrows
Businesses can't afford to ignore the sticky issues
"Do we praise GE for Ecomagination, or revile it for the manufacture of arms?" asks Todd Cort, CEO of Two Tomorrows (North America) in a blog on the Guardian Sustainable Business site illustrating the nuance of assessing corporate sustainability performance. Clearly, the former weighed heavily in Two Tomorrows' evaluation, as GE ranked in the top tier. In a separate Guardian blog, Cort listed the attributes of top-tier companies:
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These companies not only recognise and manage sustainability risks, they embrace them and derive new cost and revenue opportunities from them.
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They do not shy away from the difficult issues. Too often companies will repackage their normal and existing business practices in a "green light" while ignoring what is challenging and disagreeable.
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They all have strong evidence that the messages on sustainability espoused by the company leadership has been acted upon by the company as a whole.
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They all have a deep commitment and embedded processes to create innovative products that have a better environmental or social profile. These might be products that use less energy or resources to produce, have lower environmental impacts at the end of life or are more accessible to disadvantaged people and communities.
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They all are working to control environmental and social risks in the supply chain. All have good practice policies, standards, contracts and auditing in place to control the key supply chain risks. Many are also developing innovative ways to collaborate with suppliers to generate new economic models and incentives for better practice.
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They all discuss stakeholders as an enormous source of value to the company and they have distinct mechanisms to gather and weigh that feedback at key decision-making points within the company. Certainly traditional stakeholders such as customers and investors as sources of revenue and capital, but also regulators, advocacy and pressure groups, academia etc are discussed as sources of new ideas and better means to solve the most tenacious challenges that they face as companies.
GE (NYSE: GE) is an advanced technology, services and finance company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. Dedicated to innovation in energy, health, transportation and infrastructure, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.ge.com.
Citizenship at GE is more than a program or a set of good intentions - it is a full-time commitment built upon cultural behaviors and actions. These actions are integrated with business strategy and have defined goals, strategies and metrics that make it actionable and accountable. GE18368
