GE's Citizenship Report

GE has joined the ranks of major companies issuing comprehensive statements about their efforts outside the regular business of making money -- on things such as corporate governance and responsibility, as well as the environment. With the report, "Our Actions," [PDF] GE aims to tell the story of how GE does business, their impact on the communities they work in, and their efforts to be a good citizen of the world. The report, which is surprisingly candid and large, used the Global Reporting Initiative 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. GE is known as a management trendsetter, and hopefully this report, which critics argue as being not as complete as it could have been, will nudge other corporations to become more transparent and open to employees, shareholders and the public. True, GE is doing this because it makes business sense to be transparent, open and honest -- they're not doing this for altruistic reasons -- but nevertheless, the report is a step in the right direction, and may show other businesses, that sometimes, honesty does pay.

Other companies that have published corporate responsibility reports, include: IBM, Sunoco, HP, and Gap [PDF].