Avnet, Inc., a leading global technology distributor, announced today that it has been recognized by the Ethisphere Institute, an independent center of research promoting best practices in corporate ethics and governance, as a 2014 World’s Most Ethical Company®.
This is Avnet’s first year being honored with this award, which recognizes organizations that continue to raise the bar on ethical leadership and corporate behavior. World’s Most Ethical Company honorees understand the correlation between ethics, reputation and daily interactions with their brand and that the award belongs as much to their employees as it does to them. Avnet is one of only five companies in the electronics industry honored this year.
“As a global organization entrusted by the world’s leading technology companies to service a broad base of customers around the world, ethics and integrity are core to Avnet’s success,” said Rick Hamada, chief executive officer of Avnet, Inc. “Integrity is not just included in Avnet’s core values, it is our number one core value. This recognition from the Ethisphere Institute validates what our employees around the world demonstrate every day—that integrity matters and is a critical part of what makes Avnet a truly premier global business partner, employer and industry leader.”
Avnet continues to invest in many initiatives to enhance and expand its compliance, ethics, governance, sustainability, and community outreach programs. The company was recognized in part due to the effectiveness and influence of its compliance and ethics functions throughout the organization.
“We have one compliance standard for the company—full legal compliance and uncompromised business ethics,” said Harvey Woodford, chief ethics and compliance officer, Avnet, Inc. “Avnet’s inclusion on the list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies reflects our global team’s commitment to ethical business practices around the world.”
“The entire community of World’s Most Ethical Companies believe that customers, employees, investors and regulators place a high premium on trust and that ethics and good governance are key in earning it,” said Ethisphere’s chief executive officer, Timothy Erblich. “Avnet joins an exclusive community committed to driving performance through leading business practices. We congratulate everyone at Avnet for this extraordinary achievement.”
The World’s Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient™ framework. The Ethics Quotient framework has been developed over years of effort to provide a means to assess an organization’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies, rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics. The Ethics Quotient framework and methodology was determined, vetted and refined by the expert advice and insights gleaned from Ethisphere’s network of thought leaders and from the World’s Most Ethical Company Methodology Advisory Panel.
Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (25%), reputation, leadership and innovation (20%), governance (10%), corporate citizenship and responsibility (25%) and culture of ethics (20%).
The full list of the 2014 World’s Most Ethical Companies can be found at http://ethisphere.com/worlds-most-ethical/wme-honorees/.
