RALEIGH, N.C. — Progress Energy (NYSE: PGN) is ranked number 16 in CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008, an annual ranking of top corporate citizens among public companies headquartered in the United States.
“It is an honor to be recognized as one of the nation’s top corporate citizens,” said Bill Johnson, chairman, president and CEO of Progress Energy. “Our company will celebrate its 100th anniversary of service this summer. Throughout our history, we have emphasized the importance of being a good corporate citizen and a powerful partner with the communities we serve.
“This recognition is a tribute to our more than 10,000 employees who act with integrity each day while focusing on safety, operational excellence and delivering superior service to our customers. We know that millions of people depend on us, and we have to keep earning their trust every day,” Johnson said.
He added that conducting all aspects of Progress Energy’s business in a responsible way, with integrity and transparency, is fundamental to the company’s success.
“For Progress Energy, being a good corporate citizen means being a good steward of the environmental resources — the land, water and air – that has been entrusted to us,” Johnson said. “It means valuing and respecting all stakeholders in our company — our employees, our customers, our shareholders and our community partners. It also means investing in our communities through our corporate giving, to enhance the quality of life for all citizens in the communities we serve.”
In compiling the 100 Best Corporate Citizens, CRO — in partnership with IW Financial – a Portland, Maine, research and consulting firm specializing in environment, social and governance issues — ranked the corporate responsibility efforts of large-cap companies from the Russell 1000 index in eight categories: Climate Change, Employee Relations, Environment, Financial, Governance, Human Rights, Lobbying and Philanthropy. CRO determined the final ranking as a weighted average of these eight categories.
With transparency being such an important component of corporate responsibility, IW Financial relies on publicly-available data from company financial disclosures, sustainability/environment/citizenship reports, websites, EPA databases, and a number of other sources as part of its standardized research processes.
“Some companies have good environmental policies,” said Mark Bateman, IW Financial’s director of Research. “Some companies have great employee relations. Some companies have exemplary human rights records. CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list answers the question: Which companies do best across a wide variety of citizenship issues?”
The 2008 list marks the 100 Best Corporate Citizens’ ninth year in publication. The list’s methodology for 2008 includes two significant updates. First, CRO changed rating agencies, switching from KLD Analytics to IW Financial. In contrast with KLD’s interview-and-questionnaire-based method, IW Financial bases rankings solely on publicly-available data and uses its set of patented technologies to do the analysis. Second, the 2008 100 Best Corporate Citizens rankings are limited to the Russell 1000-companies that represent the largest impact on B2B and consumer markets.
For more details about CRO’s 100 best corporate citizens 2008, the methodology and CRO magazine, visit http://www.thecro.com.
About The CRO
CRO is the only membership media platform for Corporate Responsibility practitioners, and the professional service providers and non-profit influencers that serve them. The CRO publishes the 20,000-subscriber ‘CRO’ Magazine and 200,000+ subscriber TheCRO.com, bi-weekly e-newsletters, webinars, and produces the four-time-annual CRO Conferences. With over 100 members including leading companies Sara Lee, Amtrak, IBM, Citigroup, Chubb Insurance, Mattel, Intel, Dell, Pepsi, Home Depot, Starbucks, Avon, Gap, State Street, Xerox, leading providers such as Deloitte, Baker & McKenzie, SAP, Hogan & Hartson, Edelman, Manning Selvage & Lee, Grant Thornton, Golin Harris, Ketchum, Cone, LRN, Integrity Interactive, and non-profits including Stanford University, Boston College, UCLA, and Harvard. Corporate membership information can be found at TheCRO.com, or by calling 732-476-6160.
Read More:CarolinaNewsWire
