Markets

Ranked: America’s Best-Managed Companies of 2024

Published

3 weeks ago

December 30, 2024

Marcus Lu

Graphics/Design:

Anna Diederichs

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

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Ranked: America’s Best-Managed Companies of 2024

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This graphic ranks the 30 best-managed companies in the U.S., according to The Drucker Institute Company Ranking 2024, an annual ranking of American companies based on a holistic measure of corporate effectiveness.

The headline is that Apple is the best-managed company of 2024, stealing the top spot from Microsoft (which held #1 for the past four years).

Data and Methodology

To come up with a final Effectiveness score, researchers graded each U.S. company by five categories (percentage weights below):

Social responsibility: 24%
Customer satisfaction: 22%
Innovation: 21%
Employee engagement and development: 20%
Financial strength: 13%

Effectiveness scores are represented as T-scores, which measures how many standard deviations a data point is from the mean (average) of a t-distribution. In the simplest terms, this means:

50: Company’s score is equal to the average
60: Company is in the top 15-20%
70: Company is in the top 2.5%
80: Company is in the top 1%

The data we used to create this infographic is listed in the following table.

Company	Social Responsibility	Customer Satisfaction	Innovation	Employee Engagement & Development	Financial Strength	Effectiveness (Final score)
Apple	63	65	100	63	120	92.1
Nvidia	66	59	73	75	139	90.1
Microsoft	69	58	98	69	99	88.8
Intel	74	72	82	64	46	78.5
Mastercard	67	55	80	67	71	75.7
Johnson & Johnson	65	52	88	66	66	75.5
Procter & Gamble	54	66	75	63	88	75.2
Alphabet	58	52	75	65	97	74.2
Adobe	72	59	71	70	56	73.9
Philip Morris	58	59	85	69	58	73.8
Visa	64	59	78	65	65	73.6
John Deere	60	70	82	59	55	73.4
Nike	59	63	86	59	58	72.6
Qualcomm	71	53	79	59	61	72.3
Cisco Systems	67	65	65	69	55	72.1
Oracle	63	66	77	55	61	71.9
PepsiCo	67	62	74	55	63	71.5
Salesforce	63	66	71	68	50	71.5
Amazon	47	56	91	49	91	71.3
IBM	68	60	71	62	58	71.2
Walmart	55	56	93	42	84	71.1
GM	62	63	73	56	66	70.3
Costco	52	67	76	59	69	70.1
Intuit	67	59	62	73	50	69.5
Lockheed Martin	58	63	72	63	59	69.3
American Express	61	58	72	65	57	69.1
Colgate- Palmolive	67	65	53	65	65	69.1
GE Aerospace	57	68	74	56	57	68.8
Caterpillar	55	69	71	57	62	68.7
HP	70	62	61	64	52	68.5

Apple Steals #1

As previously mentioned, Apple is the best-managed company of 2024, stealing the top spot from Microsoft.

The iPhone maker’s strongest areas were innovation and financial strength. Apple’s biggest releases this year were the Vision Pro and iPhone 16 series, as well as a the launch of Apple Intelligence.

Other Developments in the 2024 Ranking

The Drucker Institute highlights some interesting stories from this year’s ranking.

First is the prevalence of tech companies, which have continued their consistent performance in the ranking.

Companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft have established a virtuous cycle that fuels their ability to innovate, attract top talent, and expand their markets. This cycle is key to their sustained success.
– Michael Kelly, Executive Director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University

Another highlight is Mastercard, which climbed 14 spots from 2023 thanks to its “customer-centric approach” and investments in innovation. Earlier this year, Mastercard released an in-depth report on emerging tech trends.