2. Theoretical review and problem statement. Analysis of the methods for assessing Corporate Reputation

The growing importance of reputation in recent decades as a valuable intangible that can be managed has led to reputation rankings having become increasingly influential in the business world, along with and originating from certain methodologies developed in the academic world. This study analyses the most significant in each area.

2.1. Reputation rankings. Comparative analysis

The indexes, or indicators of reputation assessment, commonly called rankings, are generally published on an annual basis and are linked to consulting firms and the media. They are recognized by the business community as tools that generate a certain level of influence on business strategies. We will review the most renowned worldwide, which include the following: the World’s Most Admired Companies by the Hay Group, Global RepTrakTM Pulse by the Reputation Institute, BrandzTM Top 100 by Millward Brown, and the World’s Most Respected Companies by Barron’s; in Spain and Latin American countries, we find MERCO (Corporate Reputation Business Ranking) prepared by the company Villafañe y Asociados, Análisis e Investigación

All of these take into account different variables for their evaluation. According to Professor Villafañe (Villafañe, 2004), by using one name or another we can generally classify them into six groups of attributes: economic results, commercial quality, labour quality, innovation, internationalisation, and ethics/CSR. As we will see, even though they analyse similar attributes, the results they arrive at are very different, as shown in the following table that compares the ranking of the five most reputable companies in the leading world indexes mentioned above between 2011 and 2019, where we can see the variations that have occurred among indexes and within the indexes themselves for each year (Table 1).