Microsoft Once Again Listed In World’s Most Ethical Companies List

The Ethisphere Institute, an independent center of research promoting best practices in corporate ethics and compliance, announced today the selection of the 2014 World’s Most Ethical Companies. The World’s Most Ethical Company designation recognizes companies that truly go beyond making statements about doing business ethically and translate those words into action.

Microsoft was included in the 2014 list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. This is 4th year in a row for Microsoft and they commented the following regarding this honor,

Ethical and responsible business practices are the bedrock of our corporate governance practices. These practices are designed to promote the interests of shareholders, maintain checks and balances, strengthen accountability and foster responsible decision making.

We work diligently to meet our responsibility to serve the needs of the communities in which we live and work, and to manage our business with the utmost integrity. At Microsoft, we are committed to applying our technology, ingenuity and collaborative spirit to help solve critical social and environmental challenges and create fulfilling opportunities for people around the world.

While we are very grateful and highly appreciative of this honor, we recognize there is more work to be done, and we commit ourselves to ongoing improvement.

Read about this assessment below,

The World’s Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient™ framework.  The Ethics Quotient framework has been developed over years of effort to provide a means to assess an organization’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way.  Rather than measuring all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics, Ethisphere collects a comprehensive sampling of definitive date in core competencies.  The Ethics Quotient framework and methodology was determined, vetted and refined by the expert advice and insights gleaned from Ethisphere’s network of thought leaders and from the World’s Most Ethical Company Methodology Advisory Panel.  Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (25%), reputation, leadership and innovation (20%), governance (10%), corporate citizenship and responsibility (25%), and culture of ethics (20%).

The full list of the 2014 World’s Most Ethical Companies can be found at http://ethisphere.com/worlds-most-ethical/wme-honorees.