How well does reputation match CSR performance – part one

A new survey released by Harris Interactive goes someway toward answering just what the integration of a strong all-encompassing CSR business model does for a company. The list compiled recently asked more than 30,000 people to evaluate the 60 highest profile companies in the United States and then give ratings based on perception (primarily, I presume) of the company’s performance when it came to a number of measurements to create the 12th annual Harris RQ (reputation quotient) ranking. These included social responsibility, emotional appeal, financial performance and products & services. These weighted scores are then combined to provide a list of scores which puts the companies into an overall ranking based upon reputation.

It leads to some intriguing questions as to just how well companies with a strong performance within the realms of CSR are integrating that with an overall reputation measurement. It’s a good starting point to see how the top five look within each of these categories in the first place:

Social Responsibility – 1) Whole Foods Market; 2) Johnson & Johnson; 3) Google; 4) The Walt Disney Company; 5) Procter & Gamble Co.
Emotional Appeal – 1) Johnson & Johnson; 2) amazon.com; 3) UPS; 4) General Mills; 5) Kraft Foods
Financial Performance – 1) Google; 2) Berkshire Hathaway; 3) Apple; 4) Intel; 5) The Walt Disney Company
Products & Services – 1) Intel Corporation; 2) 3M Company; 3) Johnson & Johnson; 4) Google; 5) Procter & Gamble Co.
Vision & Leadership – 1) Berkshire Hathaway; 2) Google; 3) Apple; 4) Intel Corporation; 5) The Walt Disney Company
Workplace Environment – 1) Google; 2) Johnson & Johnson; 3) Apple; 4) Berkshire Hathaway; 5) 3M Company

So who had the best reputation amongst the companies studied? Google, ended up number one on the overall RQ score of 84.05 just edging out Johnson & Johnson with a combined total of 83.13. According to be the evaluation of the scores compiled by Harris 16 of the 60 companies reviewed were considered to have an ‘excellent’ reputation level. Even though Google have been under more scrutiny recently due to privacy concerns and some external investigations the company still compiled a top ranking. The remainder of the top 10 played out as shown below:

Click on image to enlarge

It’s very interesting to note that Google only led in two key components (financial performance/workplace environment) ranking fourth in products & services, third for social responsibility, plus second in vision &  leadership but captured the best combined score. It’s an encouraging sign that a company that finished eleventh for example in social responsibility and be able to rank at the summit of the overall RQ rankings.

From my point of view each of the six subcategories have a direct correlation to overall CSR performance and the overall scoring was weighted evenly between each reputational dimension. It’s a bit of a pity that only 60 corporations are studied in this poll as I feel that it certainly provides a strong barometer as to how the public are perceiving the overall business performance of the individual corporation far beyond just how much a product or service is enjoyed or how healthy the profit sheets look. The thought of Harris expanding this to 150 or 250 corporations would be of substantial value to the companies and customers alike.

In part two I’ll have a look at which industries are performing the best, which corporations are at the bottom of the pile and how well the companies with the best social responsibility ranked overall.