Business Today Top 10 awards - Letter

This refers to the recent letters to The Sunday Times FT on the above subject.

Some of the writers are implying that the rankings are done on financial considerations and that the rankings give no consideration to good ethical business practices. In the first place I cannot imagine a company surviving for too long if they fail to comply with good business practices and secondly some of the companies that have featured in the top ten over the years have not even advertised with the magazine.

The top ten is now in its tenth year. It was way back in 1996 the magazine owner then a young energetic entrepreneur and a few of us, all professionals got together to put a set of rankings together to recognise outstanding corporate performance.

The TopTen project was seen very clearly by us as our and the magazine's contribution to society and also as an opportunity to give something back to society. Even though, I am no longer part of or involved in the selection process I am sure that objective still remains and has not changed over the last few years.

The issue whether qualitative factors like quality of management, quality of products and services, employer relations, trusted brand, employee engagement, good governance and social responsibility should be used in the rankings as the writers’ suggest, is something for the publisher to decide. In fact, in the past the rankings did take into account some of these factors though it did not have a huge bearing in the final results. Since its origin the magazine owner has always placed a lot of importance in the selection of its top ten rankings. The magazine has also invested its own resources to conduct the surveys and have always engaged professionals and reputable organisations to conduct the survey and never interfered in the final selections.

As a result, the top ten rankings today has become a vehicle among many to recognise, encourage and promote corporate excellence in Sri Lenka and that perhaps is the magazine's true contribution to society. Finally, I think it may prudent for the magazine to take on board some of the suggestions made by the writers before they begin to write the corporate story for the next decade because the story when written I am sure is bound to be very different and full of surprises for the publisher and the private sector.

Dinesh Weerakody
Colombo