Again, as before, these respondents were drawn not just from publicly-quoted organisations but also from state-owned enterprises, large subsidiaries and private companies.

The central premise of the survey is unchanged, which is to identify those companies and business leaders most respected by their peers and the reasons for those choices. For the first time, however, this survey also asked chief executives to look at which companies they think will be most respected in the future, and to focus specifically on the issue of social responsibility.

First, chief executives were asked to nominate which three companies in the world they most respected, and why. They were then asked to select three companies that they most respected in their industry sector in the world, and to state why. Then, for the first time, they were asked to nominate the three companies they thought would be most respected in five years' time, again explaining why.

Next, the chief executives were asked to identify which three business leaders they most respected and why.

Finally, they were asked about social responsibility: how important did they think it was, and which three companies did they feel were the most socially responsible.

The fieldwork was undertaken between June and October 2000, principally by telephone interview but in some cases by written questionnaire or face-to-face interviews.

Once the fieldwork was completed, the raw data was treated in exactly the same way as in previous years, weighting it by gross domestic product to reflect the economic importance of the country that the respondent is based in. A minimum qualification level of five nominations has also been applied to each table, apart from the World's Most Respected Companies by Industry Sector, where a minimum of three nominations were required.

The survey questions are deliberately open-ended (we wish to give the respondents all the flexibility they require to answer), but we have analysed the reasons given for nominations. In doing so, we are able to build a good picture of what factors are actually important in determining what generates respect for companies and business leaders. The answers given for nominating companies and business leaders were therefore analysed into 14 and 11 different categories respectively, while nine categories were used to analyse the reasons given for the social responsibility nominations.

We also wanted to provide a counterpoint to chief executive opinion, and therefore put the same questions (excluding the one on industry sector) to 130 fund managers. These respondents were drawn globally from the main financial centres, and were interviewed over the same period.

Peter Barker of PricewaterhouseCoopers can be reached on e-mail peter.barker@uk.pwcglobal.com