Two weeks ago Business Week ran a special report under the title ‘Beyond The Green Corporation‘, which was based on the announcement of this year’s Global100 ‘role models in sustainable business practises’ (view list).

Though the work by Innovest no doubt is professional, noble, and solid, I cannot help feeling that the methodology is somewhat static and irrelevant today. Basically, the list is made by analysts that through quantitative (e.g. annual reports, CSR reports, NGO documentation) and qualitative (e.g. interviews of managers) analysis assess the score of each company based on pre-defined metrics.

It is commendable that companies live up to what ever metric, standard & code-of-conduct, and have integrated business practises that can cope well with various ethical risks, but somethings are missing in the equation: the perception by all stakeholders & the company’s own ethics!

The message comes across like: “we are what the others are, and as long we do what the others do, our shareholders are happy”.

As all stakeholders today more or less are guided by ethical values in their decisionmaking, i.e. employees’ choice of work place, consumers’ choice of products, and clients’ loyalty to the company, and investors’ choice of company, stakeholder empathy & affiliation have become some of the most important parameters for the competitiveness and market value of these companies.

With all the new collaborative web technologies and the rise of critical aware stakeholders, open & ongoing stakeholder dialogue seems more important for being a ‘role model in sustainable business practises” than living by static standards, code-of-conducts, and pre-defined metrics. In particular, when we still do not know what their own ethics are!?