Best corporate citizens 2007

CRO magazine, which now incorporates Business Ethics, just released its eighth annual list of the 100 best corporate citizens. I'm still not sure I like the fact that corporations have the same rights as us human citizens, but they do. So, it's a good thing that at least some of them see fit to play nice.

It's also nice that 11 companies have made the list all eight years:

Intel
Timberland
Starbucks
Herman Miller
Cisco
Pitney Bowes
Southwest Airlines
Cummins
Ecolab
Brady Corp
St. Paul Travelers.

Give 'em a hand or better yet, some of your business.

Missing from the list after being in the top 10 since the very beginning is Hewlett-Packard, whose spymasters offered us an instructional lesson in how to erase years of good work and good will. Too bad they didn't learn anything from Merck, another former Best Corporate Citizen which accomplished the same feat back in 2005, when the Vioxx debacle got it kicked off the list after 5 consecutive years. Speaking of feats, how's that old Lowell George song go? "It's so easy to slip. It's so easy to fall."