Rediscovering our Moral Compass: JUST Capital’s 2017 List of America’s Most JUST Companies
To say this year has been one of tumult, upheaval and breathless change is an understatement. Corporate America has not been immune, as they seek to respond to the relentlessly shifting political, social and economic landscape. No longer can business take a pass on matters of morality. They are becoming powerful social organizing forces. They must choose a path.
Today, JUST Capital, in partnership with Forbes, has released the 2017 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, our annual ranking of the largest publicly-traded U.S. corporations. This is more than just a ranking. It is a venue for those who would build a more just marketplace. It is a resource for anyone seeking information on how the companies they work for, buy from, invest in, or care about are doing on the issues that matter most to them. It’s also a guide, or roadmap, for companies seeking to regain the trust of the American People – for the companies ranked by JUST Capital are evaluated not against some expert notion of good citizenry, but against the values and priorities of the American people themselves.
The rankings are based on some of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on public attitudes towards corporate behavior, involving 10,000 American respondents in 2017, which we produced in partnership with one of the nation’s foremost data science organizations, NORC at the University of Chicago, using its powerful survey tool AmeriSpeak.
Ultimately, our goal is to harness the power of the private sector to drive positive change on the issues Americans care about most – worker compensation and well-being, customer treatment, product impacts, environmental pollution, strong communities, job generation, ethical sourcing and supply chains, transparency and more. Providing the rankings is the start. Driving their usage, so that markets incentivize and then reward just corporate behavior, is the key.
By having the public define this new business performance benchmark, we believe we can help to build trust in big corporations as a force for good, breathing new life into the idea that capitalism and markets can indeed serve the broader best interests of society. In other words, it doesn’t have to be a win-lose binary battle between shareholders and society. When compared to the overall universe of the 1,000 largest public corporations, our JUST 100 top performers across all industries:
America is a country that thrives on change, diversity and free market enterprise – precisely the conditions required to redefine the meaning of business success. JUST Capital’s rankings help provide a new moral compass for this inevitability, with the JUST Seal, awarded to the top performing companies, proudly displayed to light the way.
Check out the 2017 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, which includes the JUST 100 list of the top companies across all industries in absolute rank order, as well as the Industry Leader list, featuring the 33 top performers by sector. The companies will also be featured in the December 26, 2017 print issue of Forbes magazine, with additional feature stories online.
