Corporate Responsibility Weblog - Instituto de Empresa Business School

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September 02, 2008

Multi-Stakeholder perspectives at GE

Max Oliva, Associate Director, Social Impact Management

GE has taken a proactive stance on Corporate Citizenship with initiatives such as ecomagination, which brings together needs from society with their core business. They have now a new site dedicated to reporting their commitments to corporate citizenship, as well as the steps they're taking when “integrating their business strategies with today’s major trends in world development”. They include an interactive citizenship matrix which explores the areas which meet the priorities of both society and their company.

What’s most interesting is that they also bring to the conversation different perspectives from global stakeholders in relevant issues like energy and climate change trends, supply chain management and labor challenges worldwide. One of these perspectives is from Sean Ansett, Founder of At Stake Advisors, an international expert on the matter.

"Companies with global supply chains face significant challenges in order to ensure that their suppliers make safe and quality products and that they are produced on time and at competitive prices. In addition, stakeholders increasingly expect companies and their business partners to respect and implement national and international labor and environmental standards in their workplaces. This challenge becomes even greater when companies source suppliers from countries without adequate government enforcement."

It is when bringing multi-stakeholder perspectives from around the globe in order to analyze our most pressing problems, and linking them with our core competences, that we can come to collaborative and much more ambitious actions and solutions.