Companies undertake many types of responsible business activities. It is difficult to comprehend easily the breadth and scope of their work. A new study uses a measure called the Spread, which is indicative of how broad-based the responsible business activities of a company are and is a combined score of the four criteria: Disclosure, Governance, Stakeholders, and Sustainability.
Tata group companies occupy the prime position, according to the report Responsible Business Rankings 2018 by IIM Udaipur and Futurescape. Like the previous years, this year too there is no foreign company in the top ten list. Ambuja Cement has moved up to the second position. Infosys, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Hindustan Zinc and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd joined the top 10 list. Two public sector companies have entered the top 10 list – Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
Top 10 Companies for Sustainability & CSR in 2018
1. Tata Chemicals
2. Ambuja Cement
3. Infosys Ltd.
4. Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
5. Tata Motors Ltd.
6. Tata Power Company Ltd.
7. Bharat Petroleum Corporation
8. ITC Ltd.
9. Hindustan Zinc Ltd.
10. Indian Oil Corporation
Performance across years and parameters
Aggregate performance has improved over years and across all four parameters because of better disclosure. The latter is being primarily driven by SEBI mandate. The number of Business Responsibility Reports in the year increased by 57% over the previous year and the number of Sustainability Reports too rose by 11% year on year. This improvement in reporting helped companies gain vital points in their total scores.
Manufacturing companies, on an average, score far better than service companies (total score of 59 for manufacturing versus 45 for service companies) overall and across criteria. This difference is especially marked for sustainability scores indicating that these issues are more important for the manufacturing sector. As compared to 2016, there is an increase in scores across all parameters for both manufacturing as well as service companies.
Top 5 Manufacturing Companies in CSR
1. Tata Chemicals
2. Ambuja Cement
3. Mahindra & Mahindra
4. Tata Motors
5. Tata Power
Top 5 Service Companies in CSR
1. Infosys
2. Wipro
3. YES Bank
4. HCL Technologies
5. Tech Mahindra
Public sector companies perform somewhat similar to private companies. Again, sustainability is the primary cause for the difference. Compared to 2016, both public, as well as private companies, improved their scores across the four parameters.
Top 5 Public Sector Companies in CSR
1. Bharat Petroleum Corporation
2. Indian Oil Corporation
3. Hindustan Petroleum Corporation
4. Steel Authority of India
5. GAIL (India)
Top 5 Private Sector Companies in CSR
1. Tata Chemicals
2. Ambuja Cement
3. Infosys
4. Mahindra & Mahindra
5. Tata Motors
All industries have performed better compared to the previous year, according to the 2018 Responsible Business Rankings. Information Technology and Energy are the top performing industries, while Other Industrials and Financials are laggards.
