Intel, Procter and Gamble, IBM, Hewlet Packard and Avon are household name corporations who score in the top 10 of America’s most recent 100 Best Corporate Citizens.
The list, compiled by Business Ethics magazine, is becoming as important to sharemarket investors as the fabled Fortune 500 as punters look for enterprises with greater focus on corporate social responsibility. This year is the fourth time the list has been compiled.
Top of the list this year is smaller, $10 billion manufacturing business, Cummins Engine of Columbus Indiana, which built school for poor kids in the area in which its Brazilian manufacturing plant is located.
The kids have stopped burrowing under the plant fence to steal metal they could sell, and now 800 of them attend the new school. Their parents too go to school at night. The workers at the plant got so enthusiastic about the results that they all got involved and built community health centre as well.
High profile companies that dropped out of the latest list include Xerox and Lucent, because of “concerns about accounting irregularies”.
