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Vodafone Tops Accountability Ratings
Vodafone Group has been ranked number one in this year's global Accountability Rating, narrowly overtaking BP, which has been ranked number one since 2004. Royal Dutch Shell is ranked number three. The Accountability Rating is led by AccountAbility, the global think-tank on organizational and corporate accountability, and csrnetwork, the UK corporate responsibility consultancy. Europe remains the leading region when it comes to accountability. Asia has slipped from second to third behind the USA.
This year's ranking consists not only of an assessment of the world's largest corporations, including the top 50 companies from the Fortune Global 500 but also of a number of country specific lists in Russia, South Africa and Hungary.
Simon Zadek, chief executive of AccountAbility, gave guarded applause to the leaders in the Rating, highlighting critical gaps in implementation and assurance "Envisioning a sustainable business strategy is a good first step, but implementation is where the going gets tough. This year's results show that business has made good progress, yet there's a long way to go in embedding sustainability in everyday practices. Policy implementation and 3rd party assurance are key areas where improvement is needed".
Oil sector acccountability slips to last place
Although former pioneers like BP and Royal Dutch Shell continue to demonstrate commitment to accountability processes, this year's findings show that the average score for the petroleum sector as a whole has dropped significantly, compared to 2005, and now ranks bottom of the five-sector industry ranking.
A combination of poor performance from companies such as PDVSA, Valero, China National Petroleum and Sinopec, combined with tougher criteria in this year's analysis have played a part in this slippage. Simultaneously, other sectors, notably financial services have caught up with the 'early running' made by the petroleum sector in developing corporate responsibility.
Overall, business accountability has improved, given that this year's criteria were tougher than 2005, reflecting mainstream acceptance of social responsibility.
Top Ten companies
The top ten companies in this year's rating now include a mixed bag of sectors. The leaders, in descending order are:
- Vodafone
- BP
- Royal Dutch/Shell Group
- Electricite de France
- Suez
- Enel
- HSBC Holdings
- Veolia Environnement
- HBOS
- Carrefour
Of the six key measures of accountability, the most marked performance increase has been in stakeholder engagement, with more companies systematically consulting their stakeholders. There have been notable increases in local community and Government engagement, while contractors, business partners and, notably, trade unions hardly register in the engagement process. Performance management and assurance remain areas where business has the most to improve."
Posted to the site on 24th October 2006