The World’s Most Admired Companies (WMACs): Definition and Properties

Introduction:

Korn Ferry Hay Group, which has conducted the research for the World’s Most Admired Companies list since 1997, Korn ferry Hay Group is a global management consulting firm.[1]
The produced list gets published in the reputable Fortune magazine annually.
The list includes 57 industries, with total of about 1500 companies, assessed upon stringent criteria, the result then presented to a group of about 4000 respondents, which lead to a final score that ranks the companies in the World Most Admired Companies (WMACs).

The criteria

“The world’s most admired companies” is a list compiled by the famous business magazine Fortune and Korn Ferry Hay Group.
The list contains the companies which scores high in nine criteria, namely are:

• Innovation,
• People management,
• Use of corporate assets,
• Social responsibility,
• Quality of management,
• Financial soundness,
• Long-term investment value,
• Quality of products and services,
• Global competitiveness.

The ranking methodology:[2]

• The long-list start with about 1,400 companies: the Fortune 1,000—the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue and non-U.S. companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database with revenue of $10 billion or more.
• Create the 57 industry lists, in order to achieve that Korn Ferry Hay Group asks executives, directors, and analysts to rate companies in their industry on nine criteria, innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment value, quality of products and services, and global competitiveness
• A company’s score must rank in the top half of its industry survey to be listed.
  1. Because of weak the distribution of responses, only the aggregate industry scores and ranks are published in Energy; Forest and Paper Products; Mining, Crude-Oil Production; Pipelines; Temporary Help; Trading Companies; and Wholesalers: Diversified.
  2. Because of an insufficient response rate, the results for companies in Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services and Wholesalers: Food and Grocery are not reported.
• Then, Hay Group asked the 3,920 respondents to select the 10 companies they admired most from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year’s survey, plus those that finished in the top 20% of their industry.

There is take on the ranking, because anyone can vote for any company in any industry, which is why some results may seem anomalous.
For example, Southwest Airlines ranks No. 9 on the overall Most Admired list, far ahead of No. 48 Delta. But within the airline category, based on industry experts’ responses, Delta leads the ranking, and Southwest is the seventh Most Admired company.

The most recent list:

In 2017, Fortune magazine listed the most admired companies as follows: [3]

1. Apple: is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops and sells consumer electronics, computer software and online services.
2. Amazon.com: is an American company electronic company and cloud computing company that was founded on July 5^th, 1994 by Jeff Bezos and is based in Seattle, Washington.
3. Starbucks: is an American company and coffeehouse chain, Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1971.
4. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.
5. Walt Disney Company: is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.
6. Alphabet Inc.: is an American multinational conglomerate founded on October 2^nd, 2015.
   Founded by the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Page serving as CEO and Brin as President.
7. General Electric: often abbreviated as GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in New York, and Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
   In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 68^th largest firm in the U.S. by gross revenue, and the 14^th most profitable.
8. Southwest Airlines: is a major U.S. airline, the world’s largest low-cost carrier, headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
   The airline has more than 53,000 employees as of October 2016 and operates more than 3,900 departures a day during peak travel season.

9. Facebook.com: an American for-profit corporation and online social media and social networking services.
10. Microsoft Corporation: an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington.

Bibliography

Business news AE english. (2012, 2 22). The World’s Most Admired Companies List for 2017. Retrieved 26 2, 2017, from Youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hea4Ifl9Ps
Korn Ferry Hay Group. (2015, 7 18). fortune wmac 2014. Retrieved 2 26, 2017, from Korn Ferry Hay Group: http://www.haygroup.com/downloads/us/fortune%20wmac%202014.pdf
[1] http://beta.fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies
[2] (Korn Ferry Hay Group, 2015)
[3] (Business news AE english, 2012)