IBM, Intel top ethical ranking list


1 Feb 2010

IBM comes top in a ranking of ‘ethical’ multinational companies, as compiled by Swiss ethical analyst firm Covalence, with Intel coming in at number two.

While the list of multinationals was drawn from 581 multinationals within 18 sectors on the basis of their environmental, social and labour actions, technology firms featured heavily in the top twenty.

Xerox, Cisco and Dell came in at numbers 6, 8 and 9 respectively while Microsoft made the top twenty and Google came in at number 24.

In the bottom ten amongst mostly oil and gas companies was the online booking-only budget flight firm Ryanair.

Covalence said that the most active criteria for inclusion on the ethical ranking list in 2009 were environmental impact of production, eco innovative product, social sponsorship and information to consumers while those that had a negative impact were downsizing, environmental impact of production, labour standards and wages.