After naming and shaming, and the media and blogs as watchdogs, we are seeing a multiplication of the social responsibility, sustainable development and ethical rankings. The Swiss ethical quotation company Covalence, has just published its first quarter ranking, and the press release can be found here. The winners this quarter for best ethical score are Unilever, Alcoa and Starbucks, and for best ethical progress Marks & Spencer, Wal-Mart and Dupont.
The Government of Norway, to advance investment in more "ethical companies" has adopted in 2004 an ambitious code for the profits generated from the sale of their oil reserves (about 300 billion dollars!). It is called the Government Pension Fund, and lots of information and links can be found on Wikipedia here. but the managers of the fund must then chose companies to invest in, and exclude others, and there is a bit of brouhaha going on at this time due to the exclusion of Wal-Mart. Full article in the IHT here. This is a bit surprising given that Wal-Mart came in second on the best ethical progress ranking of Covalence (see above paragraph). I suppose the "ethical evaluation" is based partly on perception, which is a subjective thing.
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