Response to Macleans article

Macleans reported on our work in this article. Although I see the point they've tried to make (and I understand why), I did think that they'd misunderstood the purpose of the Ethical Index, so I wrote this letter to explain:

My company, the Fraser Consultancy, publishes the Ethical Reputation Index featured in your article "French fries and sneakers pure evil", April 28th. I’d like to explain that our report is not designed to criticize, or condone, any particular company’s policy. We are a research and strategy company and, as such, we measure only what consumers think about companies and how consumers perceive corporate ethics. This may, or may not, reflect the companies’ behavior, and therein lies our interest. In fact your article illustrates this point very well. If companies such as Nike “widely acknowledged…as one of the best companies in North America for ensuring that standards are met at its Asian suppliers” weren’t rated highly by consumers in our study, then perhaps Nike’s corporate values could be communicated better? We are neither anti-business nor anti-corporate. Our intention is to help companies convey their corporate responsibility commitment, practices and values as well as they possibly can.