Microsoft has one again topped a list of the best-run companies in the U.S. for 2022, finishing ahead of other technology giants which slipped in the rankings, including Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software and cloud company was first for the third year in a row on the Management Top 250 list, compiled by Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker Institute.
The institute measures corporate effectiveness by examining performance in five areas: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength. The ranking is based on an analysis of 34 data inputs provided by 14 third-party sources, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft topped the list with an overall score of 98.6. That number was down 6.9 points from last year’s ranking. The company was in the top 10 in each of the ranking’s five component categories except customer satisfaction. It was sebenth in employee engagement and development, third in financial strength, first in innovation, and fourth in social responsibility.
Apple was 2nd on the overall list with a score of 83.2, followed by IBM (80.9), General Motors (80.7), Whirlpool (78.9), Nvidia (78.5), Intel (78.4), Amazon (77.9), Johnson & Johnson (77) and Mastercard (76.6) to round out the top 10.
With its eighth-place position, Amazon dropped 16.4 points from its score in 2021. The tech giant did rank second (behind Microsoft) among the top 10 companies in the innovation category, but did not crack the top 10 in the four other categories.
Google parent Alphabet ranked 24th on the list and Meta was 130th among other large tech companies.
Rounding out other Pacific Northwest companies on the list: Costco, 67th; T-Mobile, 93rd; Weyerhaeuser Co., 102nd; Starbucks, 109th; Boeing, 160th; Nordstrom, 200th; Expedia, 249th.
The Management Top 250 includes the top U.S. companies from among 902 publicly traded companies that were included in a Drucker Institute study.
In November, Microsoft released a 50-page report from an outside law firm that was commissioned to review its sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies and practices after a successful shareholder resolution on the topic last year.
The report by law firm ArentFox Schiff made a series of recommendations to revise the company’s policies and approaches, improve transparency and opportunities for feedback, and address what the firm described as “perceptions” inside the company that senior leaders are not held accountable.
