Public companies traditionally receive acclaim for delivering rapid earnings growth along with a rising stock price. Wall Street and the financial media encourage executives to beat earnings targets, and boards pay them astronomical sums for doing so.

But a preoccupation with how investors are doing in the present can result in unfortunate outcomes. For example, Countrywide delighted its shareholders with huge profits from 2003 to 2006. Alas, the nation’s largest mortgage lender all but drove itself into bankruptcy by mistreating its employees, homeowners, and mortgage investors. On a more mundane level, anyone who’s ever had to deal with a surly checkout clerk can tell you that failing to look after employees and customers can result in lost future business for a retailer.

Several studies suggest that companies that focus on multiple stakeholders tend to achieve better financial performance over the long term. Intuitively, this makes sense, too, because, as professor Ed Freeman of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia puts it, business is about how customers, suppliers, employees, financiers, communities, and managers interact and create value.

We strongly believe that the greatest and most successful companies are those that are able to benefit all of the various groups.

For the past several months, we have been compiling data and analyzing more than 1,700 public companies to discover the 25 best public companies in America, measured by their success in serving investors, customers, employees, and the world at large. We’re delighted to finally be able to share our findings. You can read more about all 25 of them below.

Click here if you’re curious about how we made the rankings.

The 25 Best Companies in America were determined over a months-long process combining comprehensive data with fundamental analysis to determine how effectively public companies serve their stakeholders.

Companies were ranked on the basis of an overall score (0-40) that is comprised of four individual stakeholder scores (0-10). Extremely poor treatment of even a single stakeholder resulted in elimination, and a company had to receive at least five points in every stakeholder category to rank among the top 10.

Overall, 1,700 companies were considered eligible. These included all America-based companies with at least $200 million in market capitalization and a five-year history as a public company.

Here’s some more detail on how each of the four stakeholder scores was calculated.

Investor (28.3% weighting)

Investor scores were based on data from S&P Capital IQ :

• 5-Year Median Return on Capital (2/3 weight)
• 5-Year Total Revenue Growth (1/3 weight)
• Must have a 5-year total return among the top 4/5 of eligible companies (i.e. greater than -13%)

Forward-looking competitive pressures, governance, and capital allocation history were also considered in the “investor” category.