As corporate social responsibility has gone mainstream, so attempts to rank and rate performance have proliferated. Indexes such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE 4 Good are perhaps best known, but these tend to take a conservative and inclusive approach. Their strategy is to encourage best practice, rather than to name and shame, or judge and exclude. Two new indexes that were launched in the last quarter are America's 100 Best Corporate Citizens of 2003 and the UK's Corporate Responsibility Index. They reveal some interesting results.

Business Ethics magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens, 40 launched in their Spring issue, ranks companies according to service to seven stakeholder groups: stockholders, the community, minorities and women, employees, the environment, non-US stakeholders, and customers. Some familiar names appear in the top 10 - Intel (3), Proctor and Gamble (4), IBM (5) and Hewlett-Packard (6) - which somewhat reflects the dominance of service sector companies in the list. Extractive industries like mining, chemicals and energy are not entirely absent, but no big-brand multinationals appear.

One of the refreshing characteristics of the list is that, unlike most multinational-focused indexes, this one places companies of all sizes side by side, from IBM with 2001 revenues of US$85 billion to Green Mountain Roasters (ranked 8th) with sales of just $96 million. Another interesting finding was the large variance between the rankings of individual companies in each of the stakeholder service areas. For example, Eastman Kodak (ranked 22nd overall) tied first in the employees category and also scored well on minorities and women, but was one of the 10 worst performing companies (i.e. ranked between 90 and 100) in the stockholder and environmental categories. Similarly, Eli Lilly & Company (ranked 72nd overall) tied first in the employees category, but was ranked 100th in the customer category. This range in performance across different stakeholder groups may suggest that companies manage their relations with different stakeholders in very different ways.

Business in the Community's UK Corporate Responsibility Index 2002, 41 launched in March 2003, ranks 112 voluntary participant companies, including more than half of the FTSE100, based on performance ratings for Corporate Strategy, Integration, Management Practices (for community, environment, marketplace, and workplace), Impact Areas (for product safety, occupational health and safety, diversity in the workplace, community investment, supply chain, global warming, energy and transport, and biodiversity) and Assurance. The big-brand multinationals from extractive sectors feature much more strongly in this index, with companies like BP, Dow Chemical Company, Rio Tinto and Shell International all ranking in the top quintile, alongside mega-manufacturers like 3M and Unilever.

Although the voluntary and self-selective nature of the Index may draw criticism (e.g. companies are only required to select three of five social impact areas), the findings are nevertheless instructive about where most progress appears to have been made. For example, in the management practice areas, environment is furthest advanced, followed by workplace, community and then marketplace; while in the social impact categories, the order of scoring was product safety, occupational health and safety, diversity in the workplace, community investment and lastly supply chain.

As much as everyone enjoys comparative rankings, it is important to assess each index critically. Is the organisation that is running the index credible and what are their vested interests? For example, a new Australian rating index launched in March on corporate social responsibility, produced by a private company called RepuTex and backed by a former Liberal political leader, has drawn high profile criticism and refusals to participate from top businesses, like Caltex, who question the organisation's motives and tactics. 42 At the same time, entirely voluntary, self-disclosure indexes with weak verification mechanisms will struggle to convince sceptical stakeholders of their value, given companies' natural bias to portray themselves in the best possible light.

In sum, though, most of these measures were developed by business for business. Certain key issues are yet to penetrate the corporate citizenship reporting and ranking process. Reports still rarely produce basic information on independent performance indicators rather than management processes. On the question of transparency, most reports still fail to provide basic quantitative data such on the following: political donations, memberships of trade associations, payments to lobby groups, pollution records, average wages paid to different types of employee (including supply chain), pending court cases, court rulings, out-of-court settlements, admonitions or investigations from intergovernmental bodies, recognised trade unions, collective bargaining agreements, and multi-enterprise codes endorsed and certifications received. With such information, companies might be able to be indexed on the basis of their actual impacts on society rather than the appearance of their management systems.