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Dell is Most Admired
Texas-based computer company Dell is America's Most Admired Company for the first time, up from no.5 last year, according to FORTUNE magazine working with Hay Group. Wal-Mart, no.1 for the last two years, drops to number four.
The complete top ten is as follows:
- Dell
- General Electric
- Starbucks
- Wal-Mart Stores
- Southwest Airlines
- FedEx
- Berkshire Hathaway
- Microsoft
- Johnson & Johnson
- Procter & Gamble.
'Corporate reputation is the product of alchemy-a mixture of everything from the way a company nurtures homegrown talent to how it manages its balance sheet', says writer Abrahm Lustgarten. 'Throw in one part customer satisfaction, another part shareholder return, add a splash of community citizenship-and voila!-you have a measure of that company's station in the hierarchy of American business'.
In addition to the overall top ten, the report features rankings for individual industries. Among the surprises, Disney headed up the entertainment sector despite what Lustgarten calls a year of 'management soap opera' in US headlines - he cites the high quality of its products and the fact that its stocks 'trounced those of rivals'.
IBM left the overall top ten but was ranked highest by computer firms themselves. 'Dell's peers see it as a brilliantly managed brand' says Lustgarten, 'but no innovator in raw computing'. In a companion article Andy Serwer attributes Dell's success in the face of downward-spiralling prices and commoditization to a strategy of 'riding the wave' with its low-cost, direct-sales model rather than attempting to erect proprietary systems like HP and IBM.
582 FORTUNE 1,000 companies in 65 industries were ranked by 10,000 executives, directors, and securities analysts, along with the top 25 foreign companies. The list and related stories appear in the March 7 issue, available on newsstands February 28 and at www.fortune.com
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