The sustainability report of the Lockheed Martin is based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is known as the most significantly used sustainability reporting process in the world. The report is aligned to the GRI G4 Core (the latest guidelines). In addition, the report is prepared in accordance with the principles of defining report quality, such as balance, stakeholder inclusiveness, sustainability context, materiality, comparability, accuracy, timeliness, clarity, and reliability (Global Reporting Initiative 16). The company identified its stakeholders, their expectations and interests like government institutions with the expectation and interest to protect and offer important services to citizens across the world. Moreover, organizational performance is presented in relation to sustainability as the report covered aspects like economic, social, and environmental. Furthermore, the report is prepared on regular basis at schedule time (Lockheed Martin 3). The intended audience of the report include all internal and external stakeholders of the company, including customers, employees, government, community, institutions, and suppliers, etc.
In relation to general standard disclosures, strategy and analysis is one of the factors needs to be considered to develop sustainability report. It is related to the statement from the top level decision-maker of the organization regarding relevance of the sustainability to company and company’s strategy to address the issue of sustainability (Global Reporting Initiative 24). The CEO of the company stated that the mission of the company is to increase innovation, integrity and security in order to preserve environment, develop communities and drive responsible growth. In addition, strategies were identified in the report with respect to G4 guidelines. For instance, ongoing efforts are made to develop the culture of integrity and to reduce corruption by the company in relation to governance. Cyber security and information technology (IT) capabilities are enhanced by Cyber Incident Response Assistance program. In the same manner, strategies related to supplier sustainability (e.g. training of 14, 000 suppliers), product performance (e.g. investment in energy portfolio), resources efficiency (e.g. reduction in carbon emissions), and talent management (e.g. culture of diversity) are identified in the report (Lockheed Martin 2).
Moreover, organizational profile is also provided in the company’s sustainability report (Lockheed Martin 4), including company’s name, products and services, employees, segments, and customers, etc. The guidelines from G4-3 to G4-16 have been followed in the report (refers to appendices A, B, and C). There is clear identification of material aspects and boundaries in the Lockheed Martin’s sustainability report as sustainability is defined in the report as “the understanding of technologies and systems as mediums of innovation in a world challenged by resources. The key material i.e. approach used by the company is identified such as sales growth, long-term cost avoidance and high-performance culture, and investor out-reach with sustainability factors. In addition, it is identified that the company addresses the mega trends through mobilizing the energy infrastructure, providing global security tools, fostering business integrity, enhancing use of technology and developing talent (Lockheed Martin 7). Appendices D, E, F and G provide an overview of the value chain of the company, its strategy, sustainability management plan and stakeholder management that are aligned to the global reporting initiative guidelines.
The report is made in accordance with the G4 reporting guidelines as it fulfills the normative standards of citizenship. It can be ascertained by the inclusion of governance factor in the report (refers to Appendix H). As the company focuses on the bribery and corruption controls, responsible sales, export and import controls, stakeholder engagement, human rights and lobbying (Lockheed Martin 18). However, there is a limitation in the sustainability report of Lockheed Martin that there is no information about the ethics and integrity with respect to general standard disclosures along with report profile.
The G4 guidelines classified the specific standard disclosures into three categories like economic, environmental and social. The social responsibility is divided into four sub-categories like labor practices and decent work, human rights, society and product responsibility (Global Reporting Initiative 43). The report of the sustainable operations of Lockheed Martin covered the economic, social and environmental aspects as part of specific standard disclosures. For instance, the report includes the delivery of economic and high level performance value across the lifecycle of products. Appendix I provide a notion of the economic impact of the product performance of the company. For instance, it is indicated that the improved processes reduce the costs for Navy. In addition, the company uses life cycle analysis to incorporate total cost. The efforts to reduce the economic costs include monitoring of extreme weather and 3D printing to reduce costs (Lockheed Martin 34).
The report provided an overview of the company’s efforts to the customers, environment and community’s welfare. Investment in the citizenship value of cyber security identifies the efforts to social good, rights of human and global issues. In addition, avoidance of use of hazardous material in developing products shows product responsibility as part of social aspect (Lockheed Martin 36). Moreover, the report followed the G4 guidelines by providing an insight about the equitable talent, management and retention, workplace safety and STEM outreach. It is identified in the report that investment is made to develop and retain talented employees and to create the culture of inclusion. In addition, the focus is on the injury-free working environment and investment in the STEM talent development (Lockheed Martin 46). Appendix J identifies the STEM outreach efforts and Appendix K specifies the diversity and inclusion efforts of the company. Appendix L identifies the health and safety efforts of the company in relation to G4 guidelines and citizenship standards.
Furthermore, the company focuses on the supplier sustainability/procurement that can be understood by the fact that the company have 16, 000 active suppliers to solve sustainability issues. Sustainability summits are held by the company and Supplier Code of Conduct of the company enable it to focus on the ethical aspects to promote global citizenship (Lockheed Martin 61).
The sustainable efforts made by the company include energy, environment, safety and health, green buildings, and sustainability. Appendix M specifies environmental sustainability efforts of the company by 21% reduction in water, 20% in carbon emissions, 15% energy reduction and 47% waste landfill (Lockheed Martin 71). Last but not the least, the company made efforts to customer privacy, data fraud, sabotage and theft and intellectual property rights (IPRs) (Lockheed Martin 77).
The analysis of the company’s sustainability report in relation to G4 guidelines indicates that the company followed the citizenship standards and reporting guidelines. The grade of the company’s sustainability report is A instead of A+ because there is a need of more clear specifications. The management of the report should make separate section of community development, ethics and integrity and other specific aspects as some of the factors like procurement, labeling and risk assessments are vague. In addition, the management should identify the mediums of communication to communicate/disseminate the information regarding report to stakeholders. The focus on cohesion and clarity will improve the sustainability report of the company to attract the investors.
Work Cited
Global Reporting Guidelines. G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. 2013. Web. 29 Jul. 2016. <https://g4.globalreporting.org/Documents/GRIG4-Part1-Reporting-Principles-and-Standard-Disclosures.pdf>
Lockheed Martin. Sustainability.2014. Web. 29 Jul. 2016. <http://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/corporate/documents/Sustainability/2014-sustainability-report.pdf>
Appendices
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix C
Appendix E
Appendix F
Appendix G
Appendix H
Appendix I
Appendix J
Appendix K
Appendix L
Appendix M
