This year, 9 Food and Beverage Companies find a place in the recently released list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for 2023.
Ethisphere recently released its 2023 list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies, recognizing 135 organizations across 19 countries and 46 industries. And include 8 first-time honorees and 6 organizations named to the honoree list 17 times, marking every year since its inception.
This marks the 17th year Ethisphere has published the list, and PepsiCo., Inc. has been an honoree every single year since. Kellogg Company is just a little behind, having been on the list 15 times, and illycaffè spa has been on the list for the 11th time.
“People look to businesses today to lead on important issues and to do right by all of their stakeholders,” said Ethisphere CEO Erica Salmon Byrne. “It takes vision and values to explain your why and create the programs and practices that turn those statements into actions. We are thrilled to celebrate this year’s honorees as part of an exclusive group dedicated to leading by example on business integrity.”
“PepsiCo is proud to be a 17-time World’s Most Ethical Companies honoree. This recognition highlights our commitment to act with integrity and do business the right way while continually improving our efforts to lead with purpose and inspire positive change in our markets and communities,” said Ramon Laguarta, Chairman of the Board of Directors Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo.
“The outperformance, which Ethisphere refers to as the Ethics Premium, has remained consistent since we began tracking the equity performance of honoree companies. This outperformance results from the kinds of practices that lead a company to be on our list – investments in their people, culture, and communities. This data shows that, over time, these practices lead to stronger financial performances by businesses,” Salmon Byrne added.
Nine Most Ethical Food and Beverage Companies in 2023
- ADM (4th time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 42,000
Annual Revenue: $101,000,000,000 - Brown-Forman (2nd time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 5,200
Annual Revenue: $3,933,000,000 - Charoen Pokphand Group Co., Ltd. (3rd time on the list)
Headquarters: Thailand
Employees: 360,000
Annual Revenue: $408,000,000 - Grupo Bimbo (7th time on the list)
Headquarters: Mexico
Employees: 138,000
Annual Revenue: $18,900,000,000 - illycaffè spa (11th time on the list)
Headquarters: Italy
Employees: 800
Annual Revenue: 450 - Ingredion Incorporated (9th time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 12,000
Annual Revenue: $6,894,000,000 - Kellogg Company (15th time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 33,000
Annual Revenue: $14,000,000,000 - PepsiCo, Inc. (17th time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 315,000
Annual Revenue: $86,000,000,000 - The Hershey Company (2nd time on the list)
Headquarters: United States
Employees: 19,270
Annual Revenue: $10,400,000,000
Ethics and Performance
Ethisphere’s 2023 Ethics Index, the collection of publicly traded companies recognized as recipients of this year’s World’s Most Ethical Companies designation, outperformed a comparable index of large-cap companies by 13.6 percentage points over five years.
Methodology and Scoring
Grounded in Ethisphere’s proprietary Ethics Quotient®, the World’s Most Ethical Companies assessment process includes more than 200 questions on culture, environmental and social practices, ethics and compliance activities, governance, diversity, and initiatives that support a strong value chain. The process serves as an operating framework to capture and codify the leading practices of organizations across industries and around the globe.
To view the complete list of this year’s honorees, please visit the World’s Most Ethical Companies website at https://worldsmostethicalcompanies.com/honorees.
About Ethisphere
Ethisphere is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust, and business success. Ethisphere has deep expertise in measuring and defining core ethics standards using data-driven insights that help companies enhance corporate character. Ethisphere honours superior achievement through its World’s Most Ethical Companies® recognition program provides a community of industry experts with the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), and showcases trends and best practices in ethics with Ethisphere Magazine.
Ethisphere also helps to advance business performance through data-driven assessments, guidance, and benchmarking against its unparalleled data: the Culture Quotient dataset focused on ethical culture and featuring the responses of 2+ million employees around the world; and the Ethics Quotient dataset, featuring 200+ data points highlighting the ethics, compliance, social, and governance practices of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. For more information, visit https://ethisphere.com.
Ethisphere’s selection process evaluates applicants in five categories — ethics and compliance program, culture of ethics, corporate citizenship and responsibility, governance, and leadership and reputation. To determine which companies make the final list, applicants receive an Ethics Quotient (EQ) score relative to their peers (companies of similar structure, size, and operating environment).
