Reputation Institute (RI), the world’s foremost research and consulting firm focused solely on corporate reputation, released the top 100 global corporations in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputation. Google, as measured by RI’s annual CSR RepTrak®, has the world’s highest CSR reputation beating out Microsoft who held the top spot in 2012 and 2013. Microsoft, Walt Disney and BMW rank as the top four companies with the best CSR reputations globally. Dutch Philips Electronics ranks #13.
The 2014 CSR RepTrak® Study, which ranks the world’s 100 most reputable companies based on citizenship, governance and workplace, provides a strong business case for embedding CSR and sustainability principles into corporate strategy and operations. The study results show that firms with better CSR reputations have a much higher ability to foster desired supportive behaviors among consumers, including buying their products, recommending their company, or trusting the company to do the right thing when faced with difficulties or disruptions. CSR RepTrak® is conducted using Reputation Institute’s renowned and proven RepTrak® model, leveraged by the world’s leading companies and institutions as the preeminent management tool for analyzing reputation.
The results from the study also show that many companies still struggle to effectively communicate their good corporate citizenship with the general public. More than half of the respondents from the U.S. and U.K., for example, were neutral or uncertain when asked if a company was a good corporate citizen. “Consumers globally remain highly uncertain about corporate performance in the citizenship dimension.” says Viktoria Sadlovska, Research Director for CSR and Reputation Risk Management at Reputation Institute. “Increasing public awareness of a company’s CSR performance is key to maximizing the return on investment (ROI) in CSR and sustainability”.
The top companies based on their CSR reputation come from the IT, automotive, consumer goods and media/entertainment industries. The new entrant in the top 10 this year is LEGO, while Nestle is no longer in the top 10 list. The 2014 Global CSR RepTrak® Report including the full list of the top 100 companies can be downloaded from the website.
