Wednesday 3 February 2010

It depends what you mean by . . .


Professor C.E.M. Joad was a somewhat eccentric British philosopher and broadcaster who achieved a high level of popularity through his regular appearances on The Brains Trust - a 1940's antecedent of Any Questions. Most of his answer to questions were prefaced by the immortal words, "It all depends on what you mean by . . ."

Those words certainly need applying to the recent (OK, last month, but we've all been busy!) publication of the Management Today "Most Admired Company" Award. Guess who's top? BSkyB!

Admittedly, as Management Today (under pressure!) confess, "the awards aren't chosen by judges, at least in the traditional sense - it's all based on a peer review survey," but here are the scores on the doors:

  1. BSkyB
  2. Tesco
  3. Johnson Matthey
  4. Cadbury
  5. GlaxoSmithKline
  6. Rolls-Royce
  7. BP
  8. BG Group
  9. Diageo
  10. Cobham
Management Today: BSkyB is Britain's Most Admired Company 2009
 
Right. Time for a different view
 
Covalence are a Swiss-based organisation that track the ethical reputation of multinational companies, and produce a regularly updated ranking of such organisations.
 
The criteria that they use in determining ranking are largely based on the contribution of multinational enterprises to human development globally, with particular attention paid to the needs and realities of developing countries.
 
Here's how the Companies on the Management Today "most admired" list fare when a different set of measures are applied! Interesting that on that basis, BSkyB would be bottom of the list, not the top! The list shows where each company ranks in the list of 581 multi-national companies assessed by Covalence. 
  1. BSkyB 323
  2. Tesco 97
  3. Johnson Matthey 299
  4. Cadbury 26
  5. GlaxoSmithKline 29
  6. Rolls-Royce Not Listed
  7. BP 130
  8. BG Group 308
  9. Diageo 39
  10. Cobham Not Listed
Covalence Ethical Ranking 2009
  • What do you, dear reader of HR Case Studies, think is worthy of admiration in a company?

1 comment:

  1. I admire an organisation that:
    • contributes to the community it operates in
    • does all it can be energy efficient
    • promotes recycling across all its operations
    • makes conscious decisions about all the companies it does business with to ensure they think and operate in the same why
    And, oh yes, I forgot:
    • makes shed loads of money!!!

    EBTG

    ReplyDelete