2018 Thunderbird Opinions Most Admired Companies Survey

Leadership Styles: Toyota Is Admired For Quality; Ferrari for the Environment

We discovered nine leadership qualities that have the most effect on company admiration.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:

• Companies are admired for nine leadership qualities. The way a company builds and develops these to achieve admiration is similar to a three star chef mixing ingredients.

KEY FINDINGS ON MOST ADMIRED QUALITIES

• 29% of respondents chose integrity as the quality they most admired in a company.
• 26% of respondents chose the combination of workplace satisfaction, brand image, and financial performance as the most admired qualities.
• 17% of respondents chose environmentalism and support for worthy causes as the qualities most admired.
• 100% who admire Amazon chose vision as the #1 factor they admire.
• Of 100% of Google admirers — 50% would trust or want to work for the company.
• 87.5% of people that admire Netflix would try their products, trust their leadership and work for the company.
• 90% who admire Tesla chose integrity as the #1 factor they admire.
• 88% who admire Apple chose financial performance as the #1 factor they admire.
• Of people who chose visionary leadership as the #1 factor they admire — 80% admire Intel, but only 56% admire Microsoft.
• 100% of those who admire Kaspersky Labs chose innovation as the #1 factor they admire.
• Of people who chose integrity as the #1 factor they admire they admire— 71.4% admire Swatch, 66.7% admire Rolex, and only 60% admire Richemont.
• Of people who chose visionary leadership as the #1 factor they admire they admire — 83.3% admire Tata Consultancy, 71.4% admire Tata Motors and only 50% admire Tata Steel.
• Of the people who chose innovation as the #1 factor they admire they admire in a company — 100% admire Toyota, 75% admire Honda, 62.5% admire Nissan, but only 33.3% admire Mitsubishi.
• Of people who chose visionary leadership as the #1 factor they admire they admire in a company — 77.8% admire BMW, 55.6% admire Mercedes-Benz, 33.3% admire Porsche, 30% admire Audi and 0% admire Volkswagen.
• 81% of the people who admire L’Oréal also admire technology innovation.
• 83.3% of people that admire Ferrari, consider integrity the top factor.
• 91.7% of people that admire SAP admire technological innovation.
• 100% of people that admire Huawei, admire quality.

THE MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES BY ADMIRED QUALITIES

The nine leadership qualities people admire:

The list of most admired companies is based on the company in each country with the highest number of respondents who say they admire that company.

THE MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES BY SECTOR

KEY FINDINGS:

• Tesla is the only American company in the top global five automotive companies, ahead of Honda.
• American Express is the only American company in the top five global most admired financial services companies.
• 3M is the highest ranked American company from outside Silicon Valley.
• Delta and Southwest are the highest rated airlines in America.
• In luxury brands, the French dominate with L’Oreal leading the way; Zara (Inditex) of Spain is the only non French luxury goods in the top five.
• Intel and Apple are the most admired computer and software technology companies in the world, followed by Samsung, Huawei, and Microsoft.”

The most admired companies by industry represent the leading five companies in each sector with the highest number of admiring votes. Companies are listed left to right in order of admirers. (Note, although Ferrari had 100% GlobalRank™, the highest of any automotive company, the number of admirers was not sufficient for inclusion on the sector list).

MAP: THE QUALITIES MOST ADMIRED BY COUNTRY

The colors on the map (which correspond to the icons above) represent the top admired style (styles, in the case of ties) as chosen for #1 most admired quality within each geography.