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LeadershipWorld's Most Admired Companies

Here’s How a Company Can Become One of the World’s Most Admired

By
Christopher Tkaczyk
Christopher Tkaczyk
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By
Christopher Tkaczyk
Christopher Tkaczyk
Down Arrow Button Icon
February 19, 2016, 3:13 PM ET
Illustration by Dan Matutina

Corporate reputation isn’t a popularity contest. It’s the result of a finely tuned combination of several ingredients—some may refer to them as blood, sweat, and tears—that ultimately render success. Fortune refers to those ingredients as our 9 Key Attributes.

To determine our annual list of the World’s Most Admired companies, Fortune turns to a network of 4,000 analysts, board directors, and C-suite executives who watch the world’s biggest companies every day. They are investors, consumers, and business insiders who keep an eye on the markets, listen to earnings calls, and follow the Fortune 500 and Global 500 with a keen interest. We ask them to evaluate their peers within their respective industries and rate every company on those nine key attributes: quality of management and leadership, quality of products or services, innovativeness, community responsibility, the wise use of corporate assets, a company’s effectiveness in running a global business, its value as a long-term investment, the soundness of its financial position, and the ability to attract and retain talent.

The No.1 company on Fortune‘s list of the Top 50 All-Stars is Apple (APPL), which has held the top spot for nine consecutive years and scored highly this year in eight of the nine attribute categories (the only area it didn’t place is Community Responsibility). Among the other companies in the Top 50, only five scored highly in multiple attribute categories: Alphabet (GOOG), Facebook (FB), Walt Disney (DIS), Nike (NKE), and Starbucks (SBUX).

This year’s industry lists include 340 companies that are ranked across 54 industries. See below to find out the score and rank for the top 10 companies in each of the nine key attribute categories (an asterisk denotes a tie) and then check out the entire 2016 list of Fortune‘s World’s Most Admired Companies at fortune.com/wmac.

1 Quality of Leadership and Management

1. Apple (8.95)
2. Starbucks (8.76)
3. Walt Disney (8.7)
4. Goldman Sachs Group (8.65)
5.U.S. Bancorp (8.56)
6. Alphabet (8.5)
7. Nike (8.43)
8. Facebook (8.36)
9. Nordstrom (8.33)
10. Wells Fargo (8.26)

2 Quality of Products/Services Offered

A pedestrian walks past signage for the Wynn Macau casino resort, operated by Wynn Resorts Ltd.

1. Apple (9.22)
2. Walt Disney (8.87)
3. Amazon.com (8.73)
4. Alphabet (8.65)
5. Nordstrom (8.55)
6. Toll Brothers (8.41)
7. Netflix (8.38)
8. Facebook (8.35)
9. Alcoa (8.31)18
10. Wynn Resorts (8.28)

3 Innovativeness

1. Apple (8.92)
2. Amazon.com (8.85)
3. Alphabet (8.72)
4. Nike (8.5)
5. Netflix (8.41)
6. Facebook (8.4)
7. Walt Disney (8.35)
8. Starbucks (8.14)
9. Alcoa (7.94)
10. Comcast (7.9)

4 Value as a Long-term Investment

1. Nike (8.74)
2. Walt Disney (8.56)
3. Starbucks (8.29)
4. U.S. Bancorp (8.18)
5. UnitedHealth Group (8.16)
6. Alphabet (8.1)
7. Comcast (8)
8. Apple (7.96)
9. VF (7.93)
10. Berkshire Hathaway (7.91)

5 Soundness of Financial Position

1. Apple (9.39)
2. Alphabet (9.15)
3. Nike (8.79)
4. Starbucks (8.64)
5. Comcast (8.54)
6. U.S. Bancorp (8.49)
7. Walt Disney (8.46)
8. UnitedHealth Group (8.44)
9. Intel (8.37)
10. Microsoft (8.34)

6 Ability to Attract, Develop, and Retain Talent

1. Apple (9.02)
2. Facebook (8.72)
3. Goldman Sachs Group (8.54)
4. Alphabet (8.49)
5.* Nike (8.32)
5.* Walt Disney (8.32)
7. Starbucks (8.27)
8. Comcast (7.98)
9. Boeing (7.96)
10. Toyota Motor (7.88)

7 Community Responsibility

1. Starbucks (8.29)
2. Unilever (8.18)
3. Walt Disney (7.95)
4. Whole Foods Market (7.85)
5. Alcoa (7.84)
6. Qualcomm (7.82)
7*. Nestlé (7.68)
7*. PNC Financial Services Group (7.68)
9. Johnson & Johnson (7.6)
10. Ingersoll-Rand (7.59)

8 Wise Use of Corporate Assets

1. Walt Disney (8.46)
2. Starbucks (8.06)
3. Apple (8.02)
4. Nike (7.99)
5. Illinois Tool Works (7.95)
6*. Lockheed Martin (7.77)
6*. Alcoa (7.77)
8. U.S. Bancorp (7.76)
9*. Delta Air Lines (7.61)
9*. PNC Financial Services Group (7.61)

9 Effectiveness in Conducting a Global Business

1. Apple (9)
2. Walt Disney (8.95)
3. Nestlé (8.72)
4. Boeing (8.61)
5. Nike (8.56)
6. Facebook (8.53)
7. Alphabet (8.5)
8*. Starbucks (8.45)
8*. McDonald's (8.45)
10. Toyota Motor (8.38)

See the full list of Fortune's Top 50 All-Stars and the World's Most Admired Companies at fortune.com/wmac.

About the Author
By Christopher Tkaczyk
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