Talking About Automobiles

Ford Motor Co. now belongs to a new top ten list, the “10 Best Corporate Citizens by Industry 2007”. The honorific list was ranked by the Corporate Responsibility Officer (CRO) magazine and Ford ranked as the fourth best automaker in the CRO’s Autos & Vehicle sector.

“We are honored to be recognized by CRO Magazine for our corporate social responsibility efforts,” said John Viera, director, Sustainable Business Strategies Office, Ford Motor Company. “Since we see sustainability as core to our business success, we have been working to develop metrics, targets and milestones to be explicitly integrated into our business plan. CRO’s recognition is one indicator that our efforts are paying off.”

The bimonthly journal worked with IW Financial, a research firm based in Maine specializing in environmental, social and governance issues in several sectors. CRO and IW financial based its winners on how each U.S. public companies in their performance in eight areas, Environment, Climate Change, Human Rights, Employee Relations, Corporate Governance, Lobbying, Philanthropy and Financial. The partnership of CRO and IW financial awarded ten companies in each industry.

“We saw this exercise as a valuable way to decipher companies’ performance on things like governance and sustainability issues, especially when looking at how they did when measured against the companies that they duke it out with in the marketplace,” said CRO Editor-In-Chief Dennis Schaal.

“Ford Motor Company’s inclusion among “CRO’s 10 Best” means the company’s citizenship efforts, based on the metrics considered, were at least several notches above many of the other companies in that industry,” Schaal added.

In this installment of “CRO’s 10 Best,” the magazine covers six specific industries: Auto & Vehicles; Paper; Technology Hardware; Technology Software; Transport; and Travel & Lodging. An earlier report published in CRO’s September-October issue analyzed the Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries.

“CRO's 10 Best Corporate Citizens by Industry 2007” expands upon CRO's annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens,” which will appear in CRO's January-February 2008 issue.