Journal of Business Ethics - cover“Misleading Country Rankings Perpetuate Destructive Business Practices”

Many people believe that business and government leaders should model their policies and practices on those of leading-edge countries. This is often taken to mean modelling themselves on Anglo countries, such as the USA and the UK.

However, ISL’s latest research explodes the myth that these Anglo countries rank highly on outcomes. We find that most country competitiveness rankings such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report are methodologically flawed, ideologically biased, dismissive of environmental and social performance, and hence grossly misleading.

When these problems are corrected, the Anglo countries rank much lower on country competitiveness and the high performers are predominantly north-European. We attribute neoliberal thinking to the differences between high-performing and low-performing western countries.

Therefore, policy makers and practitioners seeking guidance on how to improve their country’s economic, environmental and social performance should be looking to the high-performing north-European social-market economies.

Our Open Access paper is now published in the Journal of Business Ethics – read it in full for free and you are welcome to forward the link to anyone you feel will be interested.