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&lt;p&gt;We love rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And with the plethora of rankings that have sprouted in the last few years on every possible aspect of CSR and sustainability, from &lt;em&gt;Newsweek&lt;/em&gt;&#39;s green ranking to &lt;em&gt;CRO Magazine&lt;/em&gt;&#39;s Best Corporate Citizens list, a conference on corporate citizenship would be incomplete without a panel on rankings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Led by Campbell Soup&#39;s VP for CSR Dave Stangis, the panel at Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship&#39;s (BCCCC) conference was heavily weighted on the financial side of things with IW Financial&#39;s Mark Bateman and SustainAbility&#39;s Michael Sadowski fielding questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[IW Financial is a consulting firm that focuses on providing environmental, social and governance (ESG) research while SustainAbility is a strategy consulting firm focusing on sustainability.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stangis started off by setting a plain field: What makes a good ranking? And how do companies tackle this flood of surveys?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, Sadowski and Bateman were on the same page:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Transparency:&lt;/strong&gt; The raters must be absolutely transparent on their methodology for the ranking to be effective and implementable for those ranked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. The more sector-specific the better:&lt;/strong&gt; When criteria become muddled with too much crossover between industries, sectors and functionalities, the overall ranking loses focus and gets lost. For Sadowski the &quot;more issue-specific a ranking is&quot; the better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Engaging before ranking:&lt;/strong&gt; For both panelists this was an emphatic issue. Insisting that the rankers must spend time engaging with the companies they are ranking, Bateman said this was the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; way the ranked could feel a part of the process and understand what they needed to improve on. &quot;Without this back and forth, you&#39;re not promoting dialogue,&quot; he said. Without dialogue, the companies aren&#39;t learning anything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stangis then turned the spotlight on the panelists: &quot;What is driving this plethora of rankings?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Between the two, the panelists identified the following:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)&lt;/strong&gt; There is increasingly the need for more &lt;strong&gt;accessible data&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Sustainability&lt;/strong&gt; is a hot trend right now. Everyone wants to be on it regardless of whether it makes sense to them or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Globalization&lt;/strong&gt; is encouraging regional ratings, which in turn, offer a wide array of ways to dissect and compare company performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, asked Stangis, how do you wade through these rankings and really figure out &lt;strong&gt;a)&lt;/strong&gt; Which are worth investing your time and resources in; and &lt;strong&gt;b)&lt;/strong&gt; Which are realistic and really reflect the market and the companies that are making the effort?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, &quot;there&#39;s just not enough money to create the kind of depth and analysis we need to have rankings that are true to every market condition,&quot; observed the panelists. And with some rankings continuing to be driven by advertising revenue, this is a hard-to-achieve goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Takeaway: Just like choosing what news to read based on your perspective on the topic, choose the ranking/rating that makes the most sense for your business/company. Become very good at what matters to your supply chain, your business model, your stakeholders instead of trying to accomplish every scorecard metric on every ranking table.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previously:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; The Conference Junkie: Are You Preaching to the Converted?&lt;/p&gt;

Aman Singh Das

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