The "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list as an ethical business indicator

Strategic Management

The "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list, compiled by Business Ethics magazine, is designed to serve stakeholders with "with excellence and integrity," (Graves, Waddock, and Kelly). Because the criteria used to compile the list are broad and comprehensive, the list is an authoritative and reliable indicator of corporate ethical behavior and overall social responsibility. Criteria are reasonable, insofar as they pertain directly to environmental and humanitarian concerns. Issues related to gender, minorities in the workplace, and employee benefits are taken into account alongside issues related to toxic waste disposal and emissions control. Although there is no sure way to determine whether or not the 100 companies that made the list pursue ethical strategies all of the time, the list does offer a solid foundation on which to base the ethical behavior of an organization.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens list does not focus solely on socially responsible practices, although social responsibility is one of the outstanding criteria on which the list is based. The eight main categories used to compile the list include shareholders, community, minorities and women, employees, environment, human rights, customers, and governance. Moreover, any organization involved in a significant scandal will be automatically removed from the list. A company that reduced toxic emissions but which also committed accounting fraud would not be included in the list, for example. Furthermore, corporations are ranked not according to absolute standards, but only in relation to their peers. Unfortunately, the absence of absolute standards eliminates the relevance of ethical norms.