The press release in the url below presents some interesting insights into the latest CRO Magazine (previously Business Ethics Magazine) list of “100 Best Corporate Citizens” (http://www.thecro.com/node/615), which has been published annually since 2000 (Issues: Auditing CSR, p94):
“The list's methodology for 2008 includes two significant updates. First, CRO changed rating agencies, switching from KLD Analytics to IW Financial. In contrast with KLD's interview-and-questionnaire-based method, IW Financial bases rankings solely on publicly-available data and uses its set of patented technologies to do the analysis. Second, the 2008 100 Best Corporate Citizens rankings are limited to the Russell 1000 …. In previous years, the rankings also included the Domini 400 companies, which include many mid-cap and small-cap firms, and resulted in a perceived bias in favor of the lower-cap enterprises.”
Another change in publishers, combined with the change in source data, appear to have moved the 100 Best list in a very positive direction, even though the churn makes it hard to compare across years and some controversial picks remain:
“Unchanged is the controversy surrounding the list, which inevitably accompanies any attempt to rank corporate social responsibility. Questions have already arisen about the inclusion of Monsanto (over child labor in India), Coca-Cola (over ground-water depletion), and Dow (over its Union Carbide legacy in Bhopal.)”
The CRO press release announcing the release of the list can be accessed at: http://www.csrwire.com/News/11126.html
Take care
Dave
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther
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