Corporate Ethics Posting: evaluate response

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YOU HAVE NOT AGREED WITH THE STUDY, YOU FEEL THAT YOUR COMPANY SHOULD HAVE FEATURED AND YOUR OBJECTIONS TO THE STUDY ARE:

A.) "How" you arrived at your answer(s)
I arrived at my answers using the actual methodology used by the study.
The methodology behind the corporate citizenship rankings
By Samuel P. Graves, Sandra Waddock, and Marjorie Kelly

The aim of this listing is to identify firms that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders well. For 2004, the 100 Best Corporate Citizens list marks its fifth anniversary. Over those five years, KLD Research & Analytics in Boston has been the consistent source of our social data, while our methodology has evolved slightly. Initially, the list was drawn from 650 firms used in the socially screened Domini Index: the S&P 500, plus 150 other firms selected for industry balance and social performance. In 2003 we expanded to cover the Russell 1000, the 1,000 largest public traded firms (for consistency we included the 150 Domini firms). We also switched in 2003 from using three-year average scores to one-year scores. The stakeholder list has also expanded from four stakeholder groups to seven.

The seven stakeholder groups are shareholders, community, minorities and women, employees, environment, non-U.S. stakeholders, and customers. In each category, KLD notes where companies have "strengths" and "concerns." For example, in the employee category, a firm might get three strengths for profit sharing, retirement benefits, and employee involvement, while it gets two concerns for union relations and workforce reductions. To arrive at a net score in this category, we take three strengths and subtract two concerns. The same is done in each category. Environmental strengths, for example, might include beneficial products, pollution prevention, and recycling, while concerns would include emissions, climate change, and regulatory problems.

Since all seven variables have different scales, we standardize them to determine a standard deviation from the mean -- which indicates performance relative to peers. The scores shown in the chart represent the number of standard deviations a firm fell above or below the mean. For the shareholder performance measure, we use one-year total return to shareholders (stock appreciation plus dividends), standardized in the same way.

Next we take a neighed average of all seven stakeholder measures, to arrive at a single score per company. The fact that the scale is unweighted means that all stakeholders are accorded equal status.

In a final step, a selection committee does additional research on social scandals, or other issues possibly missed, and recommends firms to be pulled. Firms were removed for accounting fraud, for example, or if they lost money two or more years in a row.

http://www.business-ethics.com/100best.htm#How%20the%20List%20Is%20Put%20Together

B.) "What" facts and sources you reviewed and considered.

THE VARIABLES USED TO DETERMINE THE ETHICS BEHAVIOUR OF COMPANIES
Â? What is a responsible business enterprise?
Â? What constitutes a business ethics program?
Â? How is a business ethics program structured?
Â? How is a business ethics program put into practice?
Â? How can responsible business conduct be achieved?

http://www.ita.doc.gov/media/Publications/blurbs/ethics2004blurb.html

I USED THE VARIABLES CONSIDERED IMPORTANT IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS
A social contract approach frames the question of individual entitlement in terms of those agreed upon expectations of social, political, and economic institutions which give birth to and sustain them. The method is to examine the legitimacy of claims individuals can make regarding employment, and, consequently, of employers, in the light of the motivation for an initial movement out of a world of individual production to a world populated by productive organizations (as Donaldson does) or, in the context of a procedural attempt to adjust such initial expectations to the known realities of current historical contexts in order to generate specific, applicable standards by which to judge the justness of historical practices (Rawls' "reflective equilibrium"). Whether such expectations constitute "natural rights" or some derivative thereof misses the point that expectations like those that individuals currently have of employment and employers have emerged as part of the evolution of employment in our society, and have come to occupy a prominent place in the "American Dream." In fact, such expectations have been historically fostered by productive organizations when it was to their advantage to do so (e.g. IBM, until very recently, and the automotive industry during the fifties and sixties).

http://www.stthom.edu/cbes/steverson.html

I USED THE VARIABLES FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
For employees, corporate citizenship is likely to give meaning to organizational activities beyond the mere pursuit of greater profitability. Employees also know that their personal and professional needs are more likely to be taken into account in an organization that is dedicated to meeting its social responsibilities. In exchange, organizational ...