Corporate giants with hearts of gold

Corporate Responsibility Magazine released today its list of the top 10 “best corporate citizens” in government contracting.

The magazine took the top 100 contractors listed on USAspending.gov and applied the same methodology it uses to produce its annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens” list. (The necessary information was available only for the 37 publicly traded companies on the list.) Firms are judged on their environmental impact, employee relations, corporate governance, financial responsibility, philanthropy, and human-rights policies.

And, drum roll please … the best corporate citizen in government contracting for 2010 is … Hewlett-Packard!!! Well, good for them. Rounding out the top five are IBM, Merck, Dell, and something called McKesson Corp., which I’ve never heard of but is apparently the largest health-care company in the world, according to Wikipedia. Ranking in the bottom five were L-3 Communications Holdings, Honeywell, McDermott, Oshkosh and Valero Energy Corp. — however, a special category of shame is reserved for Pfizer, which isn’t even allowed to be on the list and instead gets a “red card” because it was recently fined $2.3 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for bribing doctors.

So what are federal acquisition units supposed to do with this information? Well, they’re still trying to figure that out. The Corporate Responsibility Officers Association has formed something called the “Corporate Excellence for Government Roundtable” that is “committed to improving transparency and responsibility among government contractors” will hold its first meeting tomorrow.

It all sort of sounds like a bunch of fluff, but General Services Administration administrator Martha Johnson is taking it seriously: She’s scheduled to speak at tomorrow’s meeting and participate in the discussion. Maybe GSA and other agencies are looking for new ways to take action against shady or unsavory contractors.