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March 02, 2008
Measuring Companies with a Ruler of Responsibility
by Anne Moore Odell
With 21 return businesses from the 2007 list, CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008 ranks
large-cap companies' corporate responsibility.
SocialFunds.com --
Intel claims the top position in CRO
(Corporate Responsibility Officer) Magazine's list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008. The list
highlights the top performing large-cap companies for their responses to environmental, social and
governance (ESG) issues. This marks the second year that CRO has published the list and the ninth
consecutive year the list has appeared.
 Dennis Schaal, editor-in-chief of CRO Magazine
said, "Corporate responsibility is no longer viewed as an optional, add-on program by companies. It
isn't viewed as a matter for the folks in the Philanthropy Dept. to take care of. Instead,
companies view it as a way to gain a competitive edge, to save money, and to boost their statures
with various stakeholders, from shareholders to employees and potential employees. I would say the
key trend is transparency, with companies, especially publicly held companies, realizing that they
have to put it all out there as much as possible."
CRO partnered with IW Financial, a provider of ESG research and analytics, to
compile the list. CRO and IW Financial looked at eight categories of corporate responsibility for
the 2008 list: Climate Change, Employee Relations, Environment, Financial, Governance, Human
Rights, Lobbying and Philanthropy.
"IW Financial was approached by the CRO to work on the
100 Best list and to help develop top 10 in industry lists for a number of different industries,"
said Mark Bateman, director of research for IW Financial. "IW Financial helped CRO make
determinations about the issues they wished to cover and developed methodologies suitable to
evaluating the criteria that CRO selected."
The universe of companies under consideration
for the CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens included 1,000 of the largest US companies, as defined by
the Russell 1000 Index. "We decided to focus on major corporations because we wanted apples to
apples comparisons, as much as possible, and because we wanted to focus on companies that have huge
impacts on the world," said Schaal. "I'm talking about global corporations that might be doing
business in 150 countries. It's difficult to weigh their efforts, and the challenges they face,
against a regional or local manufacturer, for example, however exemplary the smaller company's
efforts might be."
CRO plans to publish the 100 Best Corporate Citizens among small- and
mid-cap companies in their July/August 2008 issue.
The top ten companies on the list are
Intel, Eaton, Nike, Deere & Co., Genentech, Corning, Humana, Bank of America, ITT and PG&E.
IW Financial and CRO examined the numbers driving these companies' responses to ESG concerns.
CRO and IW Financial also included companies' alleged transgressions in their consideration of
which companies should make the cut. CRO has a "penalty box" for companies that could of made
the100 Best list except for scandals the companies faced. The companies in the "penalty box"
include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Hewlett-Packard, Mattel, Merck, and
Travelers Companies.
Schaal explained to SocialFunds.com: "Being on this list doesn't mean
you are Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu or Elie Weisel. The companies on this list are mammoth
corporations, and even Intel (No. 1) and Gap (No.61) faced some recent challenges. Intel is the
subject of antitrust investigations, and a contractor of a Gap supplier was caught using child
labor. The list is a way to assess 'the best' among major global corporations, to measure their
citizenship practices against one another."
IW Financial's Bateman added, "To understand
how seriously a company takes CR, it is important to monitor the company's policies and practices
over time as well as the level of disclosure they maintain. Companies that are engaged in PR tend
to have relatively poor transparency when you analyze the specifics of their disclosures. They also
tend to have poor follow through and don't continually strive to improve across multiple ESG
dimensions."
The 100 Best list is more than just a pat on the back for the companies that
appear on it. CRO's list can be a helpful starting point for investors interested in an unbiased
ranking of companies' corporate responsibility practices. Furthermore, the list is a useful tool
for businesses. Appearing on the list might help companies retain employees.
Robert Lane,
chairman and CEO of Deere, told CRO, "We know from our own experience that current employees and
future employees want to work for a good corporate citizen. This is an important trend that is
showing even more strength with new employees."
With more and more companies publishing
sustainability reports and official responses to climate change, the face of corporate
responsibility has changed greatly over the past decade:
"Nine years ago, only the most
forward-thinking companies were thinking about corporate citizenship in the broadest sense," Schaal
said. "Today, corporate responsibility as a profession inside companies is growing at a dramatic
rate and the question isn't whether to embark on sustainability programs, but how. Of course, one
of the biggest differences is that climate change issues are on everyone's agenda. Thank you Al --
I invented the Internet -- Gore, and others."
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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