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Available as hard copy and download at www.utc.com/responsibility/index.htm
The centrepiece of United Technology Corporation's stand at last month's Business for Social Responsibility annual conference in New York was this, its second CSR report - so the group is clearly proud of what it has produced. The report is, indeed, worthy of praise in some areas, but it's a curate's egg of a document, and the hope must be that UTC's third effort, due in early Spring, shows improvement.
UTC is the 20th largest manufacturing group in the US, had a $43billion (£22bn) turnover in 2005, and owns companies such as Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Otis, making aircraft engines, lifts and air conditioning units. So its social and environmental impacts are pretty large. But you wouldn't get much sense of that from this 40-page report, which gives most issues a light brush over, with a sprinkling of relevant but largely unrevealing facts and figures.
There are good parts. The strengths are the sections on the environment and community. There are also punchy case studies on some of the group's beneficial technological innovations, and, unusually, the chief executive's statement is most informative, providing more facts than you'll find in much of the rest of the report. There is also a relatively innovative section on the lobbying positions of the group.
But the important bits are often left out. The information on lobbying is woefully short on detail, with no assessment of how, and if, the group's positions are consistent with its CSR programmes. The report says UTC is having difficulty eliminating 'materials of concern' from its products, yet fails to say what the materials are, or why this is proving difficult. And it states that UTC provides employees with 'fair compensation', but gives no evidence of this in any shape or form.
Sadly, in the field of non-financial reporting UTC is not alone in committing such sins of omission, which reduce credibility all round.
Peter Mason
The centrepiece of United Technology Corporation's stand at last month's Business for Social Responsibility annual conference in New York was this, its second CSR report - so the group is clearly proud of what it has produced. The report is, indeed, worthy of praise in some areas, but it's a curate's egg of a document, and the hope must be that UTC's third effort, due in early Spring, shows improvement.
UTC is the 20th largest manufacturing group in the US, had a $43billion (£22bn) turnover in 2005, and owns companies such as Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Otis, making aircraft engines, lifts and air conditioning units. So its social and environmental impacts are pretty large. But you wouldn't get much sense of that from this 40-page report, which gives most issues a light brush over, with a sprinkling of relevant but largely unrevealing facts and figures.
There are good parts. The strengths are the sections on the environment and community. There are also punchy case studies on some of the group's beneficial technological innovations, and, unusually, the chief executive's statement is most informative, providing more facts than you'll find in much of the rest of the report. There is also a relatively innovative section on the lobbying positions of the group.
But the important bits are often left out. The information on lobbying is woefully short on detail, with no assessment of how, and if, the group's positions are consistent with its CSR programmes. The report says UTC is having difficulty eliminating 'materials of concern' from its products, yet fails to say what the materials are, or why this is proving difficult. And it states that UTC provides employees with 'fair compensation', but gives no evidence of this in any shape or form.
Sadly, in the field of non-financial reporting UTC is not alone in committing such sins of omission, which reduce credibility all round.
Peter Mason
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