World’s Most Socially Responsible Companies

Maybe social responsibility is one of the criteria you use to target companies for business expansion and attraction. If so, you should check out Global Finance Magazine's picks.

As the business world rushes to find ways to quantify the benefits of corporate responsibility, determining which companies are the most socially responsible is still a relatively subjective process. In order to identify the world’s most socially responsible companies, Global Finance assembled a panel of experts from the top corporate social responsibility consultancies and analysts. They include GoodCorporation, CSR Global and The Institute of Business Ethics in the UK; KLD Research and Analytics in the US; and ABN AMRO in Brazil.

We asked those experts to identify companies worldwide that exemplified the principles of corporate responsibility. The list includes companies large and small, local and global. Some loudly—and justifiably—trumpet their corporate citizenship efforts, while others quietly go about their business, happy simply to know they are minimizing their negative impact on the world.

Even among these companies there are a handful that stand out. Those companies, highlighted in red below and profiled on the next page, receive special commendation.

3M
ARM
AstraZeneca
BBC
BAT
BG Group
BP
BT
Canon
Cemex
Companhia Siderúrgica de Tubarão
The Co-operative Bank
Cummins
Danone
Dell
Delphi Corporation
Deutsche Bank
Diageo
Gaiam
General Mills
Gillette
Graco
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
GWR
Herman Miller
Intel
Interface
Johnson & Johnson
Marks & Spencer
Merck
Millipore
Modine Manufacturing
Moody’s
Natura
Nordstrom
Nortel
Northern Trust Corporation
Northrop Grumman
Nucor Corporation
Pitney Bowes
Proctor & Gamble
Rio Tinto
Ricoh
Rohm & Haas
The Rouse Company
Scholastic Corporation
Shell
Sony
Southwest Airlines
Statoil
The St. Paul Companies
Symantec Corporation
Tata
Tellabs
Tesco
Timberland
Toyota
Trex
Tupperware
Votorantim Celulose e Papel
Westvaco
Weyerhaeuser
WGL Holdings
Whirlpool
Whole Foods Market
Xilinx
Zimmer Holdings