Ranking, listing and backscratching

Starting every fall and running through to the first issue of each calendar year is the season of congratulatory lists, whereby (primarily business) magazines trumpet the 100 this, the 50 that or the 1,000 whatever. It may be some of the least-read* material any of these magazines do, but the purpose is not readership but symbiotic promotion. (*I'd be happy to see research data that shows otherwise; but my own experience is that I look at the ranks of little boxes and columns of data and simply turn the page.)

A magazine like the Report on Business knows that by running its 50 Best Employers list it will be echoed and re-echoed in press releases and promotional material from every one of the 50 'winners', thereby having a compounding benefit to the magazine's prestige as a source of solid information. But when you have a magazine like the ROB picking WalMart year after year as one of the 50 best employers and you note the fact that the company has a 25% annual staff turnover, doesn't it give pause both about methodology and veracity?

Of course, sometimes these rankings are simply databases of publicly reported financials, without spin or interpretation. But in such items as the Canadian Business "Rich List", the final number is as much art as science, since none of these tycoons is likely to share notarized statements of their net worth. More often, the ranking of companies is based on somewhat arbitrary aggregation of "scores" under various headings.

The fortunately featured companies promote themselves internally and within their industry for having been selected by a supposedly neutral third party. There are many examples where companies featured in the ROB or Canadian Business sweepstakes trumpet their selection in press releases to audiences far removed from the circulation of either magazine, in other countries or on other continents. And other media duly report the rankings uncritically and credulously.

The magazines can count on at least getting a sympathetic hearing the next year when they go to the grateful companies looking for advertising. Even a magazine like Corporate Knights banks on the fact that companies want desperately to be thought of as paragons of good governance and good corporate citizenship and will support the publications that say good things about them.

In effect, all of these magazines are in something of a conflict of interest when they accept/solicit advertising from companies grateful for having been named high up on one of their rankings.

It might be argued that prizes and rankings of this kind encourage companies to be better or do better, but surely that's absurd. Is there any company anywhere whose business plan includes strategies to move up the list of the top 50 employers? Much more likely is that the strategic plans for magazines have a section that speculates on how having such listings is a sure-fire way to build ad sales opportunities. They don't hide it, mind you.