The aim of corporate governance at UTC is to build a culture of integrity and ethical behavior in every country where we do business. Our values and principles provide fundamental guidance for our actions and govern the relationship with our employees, customers and communities. Our commitment to 100 percent compliance with laws and regulations is backed by the following

Board of Directors

Our 13 member Board of Directors includes 11 independent members. Six committees focus on Audit, Nominations & Governance, Compensation & Executive Development, Executive, Finance and Public Issues Review. The committees include independent directors, and four of the six committees are exclusively independent. The Public Issues Review Committee has oversight for UTC's corporate responsibility efforts.

Code of Ethics

UTC's Code of Ethics is the foundation of our culture. It was created in 1990 and relaunched in 2006 with improved ethics training and a mandatory ethics component on annual performance appraisals. UTC business leaders are required to mitigate compliance risks and improve ethics scores on UTC’s biennial employee survey. We've also increased the number of business practices officers (BPOs) from 14 full-time and 250 part-time positions in 2005 to 27 and 378 positions, respectively, in 2007. BPOs communicate standards, provide guidance, investigate allegations and insist on employee accountability. They are also responsible for ethics and compliance training.

Ombudsman / DIALOG

Implemented in 1986, UTC's Ombudsman / DIALOG program allows employees to raise questions or concerns confidentially. Since inception, we’ve received more than 81,000 inquiries and almost half have resulted in change.

Environment, Health & Safety

In 2007, we upgraded our EH&S compliance management program and issued new company standards to support our goal of eliminating government notices of violation and permit exceedences. New standards require each UTC operation to implement stronger compliance management processes, assessments and control measures.

Governance Activities

UTC's governance activities also include participation in government and international affairs, congressional testimony and industry organizations.We actively support public policy that leads to clean energy technologies and high efficiency buildings and have a political action committee (PAC) whose political contributions are funded entirely by voluntary employee contributions that contributes to political candidates and organizations aligned with UTC interests.