Merck & Co named ‘most responsible’ company in the US

HP loses the top spot in annual rankings after four years

Merck & Co has been crowned the ‘most socially responsible’ listed company in the US.

In its latest annual ranking, media outlet Newsweek has assessed the country’s biggest firms based on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and the results of consumer surveys.

Each company is scored out of 100 for its performance on environmental, social and governance topics ranging from carbon emissions and leadership diversity, to philanthropy and economic performance.  

This year the results of the research, which is conducted by German data collector Statista, saw tech giant HP fall to third place after four years in the top spot.

Pharmaceutical firm Merck claimed number one place, scoring 92 out of 100. Water services company Xylem came in second place with 91.3.

Businesses in the energy and utilities space were generally lagging on environmental issues, but leading on social ones. Technology hardware and healthcare also scored well on social issues.  

Almost a third (30%) of the overall scores was based on the opinions of consumers in the US, around 17,000 of whom were surveyed for the study. They were asked “to select companies familiar to them and then to evaluate the company’s CSR performance in general and in the three subdimensions: social, environmental and governance”.

The remaining 70% came from data and KPIs submitted by the companies themselves, or found within their CSR or annual reports.

“This year, we award 600 of the largest corporations in the US, up from 500 in 2022,” said Newsweek. “While that increase is noteworthy, even more so is the fact that the company in this year’s 600th spot has a higher score than last year’s 500th.”

There were 2,000 companies in the initial eligible universe.

Statista suggested that some of the improvements in scores was because of “the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on various metrics, including emissions, energy and financial KPIs”.