Fortune Partnership

FORTUNE determines the industry groupings by using the Fortune 1000 listing and the Global 500 listing. The number of companies within an industry range from a minimum of 5 companies to a maximum of 15. Companies must have approximately $10 billion in revenue and rank among the largest by revenue within their industry. The more companies competing internationally, the more companies in an industry grouping.

1. Ability to attract and retain talented people 
2. Quality of management 
3. Social responsibility to the community and the environment 
4. Innovativeness 
5. Quality of products or services 
6. Wise use of corporate assets 
7. Financial soundness 
8. Long-term investment value 
9. Effectiveness in doing business globally

Only the attribute names listed above are provided on the survey. Survey participants are asked to rate companies based on firsthand knowledge from working with them or based on anything they may have observed or heard about them. Thus, the interpretation of the meaning of the attributes within a specific industry is left to the respondents. 

The attributes were developed prior to the inception of the Most Admired Companies rankings in the mid-1980s through a series of interviews with executives and industry analysts to determine the qualities that make a company worthy of admiration. 

For those companies on the Most Admired list, a maximum of 10 top executives and 7 directors (outside board members) per company are selected as well as a pool of industry analysts. 

The participant list is compiled from July to September and the surveys are sent out in October each year. All surveys are due back to Korn Ferry for third-party tabulation by mid-November at the latest.

Raters are asked to evaluate each eligible company on each attribute by assigning a score from zero ('Poor') to ten ('Excellent'). For the purposes of the industry rankings, a company’s overall score is determined through a simple average of the individual attribute scores. Companies who rank in the top half of their industry are defined as “most admired” within their industry. 

Respondents are asked to identify the 10 companies they admire most, regardless of industry, from a list of companies that ranked in the top 25% of all companies the previous year; ranked in the top 3 within their industry the previous year (top 4 for non-U.S. companies); or a company that ranked among the top 50 All-Stars last year and did not make any of the above cuts. Excluded are companies on last year’s list that were not admired, i.e., did not rank in the top 50% of their industry, and companies on this year’s list that were not on last year’s list. 

Since the All-Star list is a separate poll from the individual industry lists, involving a different process (see above) and a larger set of raters, it is possible that companies may perform better on the All-Star list than they do when judged solely by their industry peers.

Visit FORTUNE's website for the full industry listings including company overall scores and attribute scores. 

The information will be published on Fortune's website on January 31, 2024. FORTUNE will also release the latest rankings in the February edition which hits newsstands on February 20, 2024. We will also share the results and insights on Korn Ferry’s This Week in Leadership series.