Following its now 11 year-old tradition, Fortune Magazine has partnered with Korn Ferry, a global management consulting firm, in order to conduct a survey that determines the world’s most admired companies for 2018. In a world where corporate organisations are continuously multiplying in number, productive competitiveness flourishes, as a means for the companies to constantly better themselves and grow.

The criteria that were chosen to describe a company as ‘admirable’ were not focused on a specific area of action. Ability to attract and retain talented people, quality of management, social responsibility to the community and the environment, innovation, quality of products or services, wise use of corporate assets, financial security, long-term investment value and effectiveness in the global market were the determinants of the survey, covering a rather broad spectrum within a company.

Being included in Fortune Magazine’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ list is an achievement companies are seeking after. It is especially important to communications professionals, seeing as the press surrounding a list like this can help morph a company’s reputation. Corporate reputation is what makes or breaks a company today, when technology in the form of social media and the web in general, make spreading the word particularly easy.

Taking Apple as an example, a company that conquers all the surveys no matter what they are about, it is easy to see the reason behind its thriving, is the connection it creates with their customers and its remarkable ability to adapt and evolve before its audience moves to the ‘next big thing’ in one of the most fast-paced industries in the world.

The results of the survey are not groundbreaking, with Apple and Amazon taking first and second place respectively, just like the year before. However, even though most companies in the top 10 list are the same, small differentiations can be noted. More specifically, Starbucks and Walt Disney have fallen a rank or two, General Electric and Facebook have surprisingly not made it to the top ten this year, Alphabet and Microsoft have been substantially upgraded, FedEx and JP Morgan Chase have entered the top ten and Bershire Hathaway and Southwest Airlines have remained in the same place.  

The ranking helps keep track of the development and improvement of the companies, while at the same time it provides a motivation across the organisations and their staff.

The survey started with about 1,500 candidates: the 1,000 largest US companies ranked by their income, along with non-US companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database that have profits of $10bn or more. Then, the range was sorted according to the highest-revenue companies in each industry, a total of 680 in 29 countries. The top-rated companies were selected from that assortment of 680.

No more than 10 top executives and seven directors per company contributed to the survey, as well as a number of industry analysts. They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year’s surveys, as well as those that were placed in the top 20% of their industry. There were no limitations applied regarding who could vote, for which company or in which industry.

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