Corning

Corning contributes to digital access by providing fibre optic installation for a German development agency project in Uganda. The company also has a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programme for Girls Scouts of the USA.

The company provides grants to schools in Maine in the United States, helping them gain access to latest software for design and engineering classes.

Corning demonstrates good practice for cybersecurity oversight and also discloses data breaches. It is one of the few companies in the benchmark with a group privacy policy that respects user rights to demand and access their information.

Corning supports open innovation through its collaboration with universities, offering professors access to its research facilities. The company also supports black-owned businesses in North Carolina in the United States in the early stages of business development. Further, it uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework to measure and revaluate its own goals and progress and also reports the number of women in its tech teams.

The company has opportunities to disclose its commitment and practices to provide products and workplaces that accommodate people with disabilities. Additionally, the company can report the number of people with disabilities it employs. While the company reports its community investments, it can also report how it distributes the wealth it creates among its stakeholders, as well as the taxes it pays and its employment in its main markets.

The company can enhance its support to digital skills programmes, especially for those focused on developing intermediate and technical digital skills.

Corning has an opportunity to enhance its cybersecurity disclosure by reporting how it monitors and responds to security incidents and making its information security management certificate public.

Corning has an opportunity to further strengthen its support for open, inclusive and ethical innovation by disclosing the ethical principles it follows in its research and development (R&D) activities.

Corning is one of the top-performing companies in the benchmark under the human rights pillar. It commits to respecting all the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work and expects its business relations to do so as well. The company has a robust human rights risk assessment process and has mechanisms to raise concerns or complaints accessible both to its own workers as well as external individuals and communities. One of the remaining areas the company can strengthen its performance in is enhancing disclosure on the stakeholder groups whose human rights may be adversely affected by the company’s activities.

The company commits to respecting worker health and safety and expects its business relationships to do so as well. However, it lacks disclosure on the quantitative health and safety information of its workers. It is one of the few companies to publicly state that it ensures its employees earn a living wage; however, it can be more transparent about how it determines a living wage. It also lacks disclosure on the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, it can make a commitment to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment and set time-bound targets in this regard.

Corning has publicly available policy commitments to act ethically in terms of data privacy, corporate taxation, bribery and corruption and lobbying and political engagement. However, the company can provide more transparency to demonstrate how it operationalises these commitments through processes and actions.