The Most and Least Ethical Companies
According to Covalence, a Swiss research firm, Monsanto is the least ethical multinational corporation in the world. Covalence used quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate 581 companies over a seven-year period. Criteria included labor standards, waste management, and human rights records.
The top-ranked companies were IBM, Intel, and HSBC. Rounding out the top ten were Marks & Spencer, Unilever, Xerox, General Electric, Cisco Systems, Dell, and Procter & Gamble.
The worst were:
- Monsanto Co. This is the same corporation that Forbes named America’s Best Company in December. Apparently, ethics wasn’t part of the equation.
- Halliburton Company. Dick Cheney’s legacy lives on in both the business and political worlds.
- Chevron Corp.
- Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
- Philip Morris International Inc.
- Occidental Petroleum Corporation
- Ryanair Holdings plc
- Syngenta AG
- Grupo Mexico SA de CV
- Total SA
The companies on this list may survive in the short term because of their economic success, but sustaining that success is another matter. As Adam Werbach, former Sierra Club president, wrote, true sustainability has four equal parts: economic, social, environmental, and cultural (click here). It’s hard to imagine any corporation standing for long on one of those legs, no matter how strong it is.
To read more about corporate social responsibility, click on these articles:
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Purpose-Inspired Growth
- New Guidelines for Social Responsibility
- Supporting Your Communities
- New Study of Corporate Citizenship
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