How to Research Companies
As more undergraduate and postgraduate students undertake projects, there comes the problem of how to acquire data.
As companies are
one of the most obvious and important foci for research, learning how to learn about companies in general and companies in particular becomes
increasingly important. This short piece was written by Carol Adams and Yvonne Laing of Glasgow University to help individuals start to find out about their target organisations.
How to Research a Company
by Carol Adams and Yvonne Laing, University of Glasgow
Introduction
This article explains how to go about researching a company. The approach used here was developed during a project funded by the Chartered
Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)(1) to compare corporate ethical, social and environmental performance with the portrayal by companies of that performance in their reporting. Postgraduate students in accounting at Glasgow University have also used it.(2)
The article starts by briefly explaining how to obtain general background information on the relevant industry and company before going on to consider how to obtain information on social, ethical and environmental performance.
General Industry Background
It is useful to begin an investigation by gaining an overview of the industry in which the company operates, which might entail studying, for example,
the industry's financial and/or social performance and other specific issues relevant to the investigation which affect that industry.
Three good sources of information on industries are:
- Encyclopaedia of Global Industries (3) covers the global industry world wide providing an account of its history together with information on its organisation and structure, research and technology and the workforce. It further outlines the issues impacting on the
industry. For example, in the case of the pharmaceutical industry, it discusses ethical issues with respect to drugs, patents, pricing, parallel
trade, more stringent testing of drugs, generic drugs and health care programmes. In addition, it provides quite detailed information on the
top ten companies in the world and a short list of further readings. - Key Note Market Reviews (4) covers the UK only providing information on the industry background, including industry structure, market sectors, consumer attitudes, distribution, advertising, market size, world output figures, estimated percentage share, export figures and future prospects. More unusually it details of government and non-government organisations with that particular industry and lists their publications. It has a whole chapter on research and development, listing the spending of the top companies in the world and in the UK.
It also gives key statistics for each of the top UK major companies, for example, turnover by geographic region and business sector. - Industry associations and other organisations. The easiest way of finding information about other relevant organisations is by keying
the name into the search facility in the World Wide Web(5). Government and non governmental organisations, the professional bodies that represent the industries and the trade unions involved with that industry may also have relevant information that they will send to you including, for example, their mission statement and their publications list.
General Company Background
General background information on companies may be important in deciding which company or companies to select for a particular piece of research. This might include information on:
- corporate history, for example, major turning points;
- current financial and economic performance; and,
- information on specific issues or themes.
There are a number of directories that provide this type of information on a group of companies, many by geographical area.
Company history
In our experience, the best publication for this is the International Directory of Company Histories(6), which gives very detailed information
on the historical development of over 3,200 of the world's largest and most influential companies. It concludes each chapter on a particular company with a list of principal subsidiaries and further reading. Even where a company has been updated it is worth reading the earlier edition
to give an insight into key events in its recent history.
Below is a selection of other reference books giving additional information on specific companies.
Company performance and other information:
World-wide:
Directory of Multinationals.(7) Up to date profile on the world's top 500 enterprises detailing directors, structure, products, a brief financial analysis of the last five years, a historical background and information on the current situation. Concludes with a list of major shareholders, subsidiaries and contact details including its World Wide Web address.
Hoover World Business.(8) Lists the top companies by sales, profit, employees, industry and geographical location and the top 25 trading partners broken down into trade deficit countries, trade surplus countries, supplier countries, export markets and the largest foreign investors in the US.
Specific geographical areas:
Australasia:
D & B Asean Series.(9) Country profile and company listing followed by listings by sales, products, location and employees.
Major Companies of the Far East and Australasia.(10) Addresses and telephone numbers, names of management, principal activities, brand names, parent office address and telephone number and financial information for the last two years, principal shareholders and the number of employees. The other titles in the 'Major Companies' (11)series listed below give the same information.
Europe:
Business in Europe.(12) Guide to sources of advice.
D & B Europa.(13) Address of the company, names of executives, principal business activities, subsidiaries, turnover and number of employees.
Major Companies of Europe. See above.
Who Owns Whom Continental Europe. (14) Corporate family tree, addresses and telephone numbers.
Major Companies of Central & Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. See above.
Individual countries:
Hoovers Masterlist of Major U.S. Companies. (15)Address of company, CEO and CFO, turnover, percentage increase or decrease of turnover from the previous year and no of employees.
Germany's top 500. (16) Handbook of Germany's largest corporations.
UK:
The Stock Exchange Yearbook.(17) Very basic information on each company that is quoted on the Stock Exchange, names of directors, addresses of subsidiaries, a list of its advisors and brief financial information for the last five years. For information on companies not quoted
in the Stock Exchange see Macmillan's Unquoted Companies.
Key British Enterprises.(18) Lists Britain's top 50,000 companies, within county, by employees, by sales and within industrial groupings.
There is also a cross-reference by brand names, export markets and principals' names. Information is very brief.
The Directory of Directors. (19) Volume one is an alphabetical listing of directors giving their full name, address, telephone number and e-mail address, status or job title, qualifications and honours, year of birth, a list of other Board appointments with status and includes a section on directors arranged by their main business interests. Volume two gives information on 14,000 major British companies, their boards of directors and financial performance.
Times 1000. (20) Deals in the main with the UK but does also have sections on Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia's top 100. For the UK it gives the top 1000 by turnover and the top 50 by profit.
Who Owns Whom United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland. (21) Gives the corporate family tree of a company plus its address and telephone numbers.
Britain's Top Privately Owned Companies. (22) Provides lists of companies that might be Public Limited Companies but are controlled by individuals and their equity capital is not listed on the Stock Exchange. It covers highest profits, largest assets, highest profit margins, highest wages, highly geared companies, highest liquidity and so on.
Other reference books on UK companies are:
Britains Top Foreign Owned Companies (23)
Britains Top Japanese Owned Companies (24)
Examples of reference books covering specific issues or themes are:
The 100 Best Companies to Work for in the UK. (25) An inside view of some aspects of the company including its personnel policies. Grades the company on pay, benefits, communications, training, career development and morale.
European Corporate Environmental Register. (26) Brief information on the company, the person and group responsible within that company for environmental matters, the company's aims and achievements, their pollution control and their community projects and charity issues.
Other sources of information on financial performance are databases like Lotus One Source, Financial Extel, Datastream and Sequencer.
Corporate Social, Ethical and Environmental Performance
The easiest place to start is with the material which the company itself makes available, remembering of course the corporate concern with image with stakeholders (see Adams, 1999). Corporate publications include the annual report, the web site(27), newsletters, environmental, health and safety reports, press releases, CD ROMs and videos. It can be very interesting to compare this information with information from other sources (see, for example, Adams and Kausirikun, forthcoming).
Government and Non-Government Organisations
An alternative account of corporate performance on ethical issues can often be obtained by looking at sources originating from governments and NGOs(28). The focus of legislation, for example, is often in areas, such as pollution, where there are major concerns about corporate activities. Information on breaches of such regulations is often publicly available.
Many NGOs have web sites giving very detailed information about companies. The Internet has enabled pressure groups to alert stakeholders/customers about any ethical wrongdoings. For example, Corporate Watch (29) aim to support efforts to build a movement for democratic control over corporations, human rights and environmental justice, harnessing the Internet as a vehicle for activism.
Another excellent source of information is the Corporate Critic database (30) available on the Internet. By keying in the name of the company, the relevant years and a specific topic a lot of information can be obtained that the company would prefer you not to know.
Biz/ed (31) also has a lot of company information including a large section on business ethics. It is linked to a huge selection of other useful sites.
Other good general business information sites are Business Information on the Internet from the University of Strathclyde(32), International Business Resources on the WWW from Michigan State University and the Dow Jones Business Directory. Some sites are industry specific.
For example, relevant sites for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries include Health Action International, Buko Pharma-Kampagne, MaLAM (Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing), Consumers International, European Agency for the Evaluation Of Medicinal Products, Pesticide Action Network, HealthWrights, Multinational Resource Center and the World Health Organisation(33). Other particularly good sites are Greenpeace(34), Consumers Association of Penang (CAP)(35) and Amnesty International(36). They are updated regularly and include all their press releases on a variety of topics.
Some of them allow keyword searches for particular topics and most include a list of their publications. In the case of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, for example, these sites were used to find out about corporate political donations, pollution, pricing, misleading adverts and the exploitation of lesser developed countries.
Before using these web sites it does pay to have used one of the general directories on the industry and company first to get an overview and so avoid going off at a tangent when you look at the Internet.
Literature Searching
The various sources of information discussed above will are likely to have given rather different impressions of the performance of your company or industry with regard to ethical and social issues and it may be time to look more in depth on particular issues. Academic journals may
provide a detailed discussion on a particular company or industry issue such as pricing, ethics, environment, marketing or parallel trade. Mostly these will be contained in business or management journals for example Harvard Business Review, European Management Review, Business Ethics, Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of World Business Studies. More current information on an individual
company or industry can be found in the quality daily newspapers, journals like the Economist, Fortune, Acquisitions Monthly or Business Week, or journals relating to the industry like Chemical Engineering News, Chemical Week or Chemical Market Reporter. The Financial Times carries surveys on a regular basis and these quite often are industry based. As well as up to date company news the newspapers will
often have in depth articles on subjects like pollution and ethics.
Newspapers have their own CD-ROMs, which can be searched by subject or the company and the relevant years. Some professional bodies have their own database. For example the Royal Society of Chemists has a database on BIDS(37). The database holds abstracts from European newspapers and industry journals. Although the abstract is in English the language of the main article might not be. The full abstracts can be emailed to the user. For journal articles, online databases like BIDS ISI (for business information use the Social Sciences Citation Index and BIDS IBSS) are excellent for searches by words in title, keywords or abstracts and covers the last eighteen years. Once the search has resulted
in one or more hits, a list is provided displaying author/title and publication details or a fuller display list that includes the abstract. It is possible to mark selected hits for the brief display list and abstract for either emailing or downloading. Other relevant online databases are EconLit(First Search), ERIC(First Search) and ABi Inform. The latter has a facility that most articles are available in full text and it goes back to the early1980s, but is US based.
References
Adams, C A (1999) 'The Nature and Processes of Corporate Reporting on Ethical Issues', CIMA research monograph, London: CIMA
Adams, C A and Kausirikun N (forthcoming) 'A Comparative Analysis of Corporate Reporting on Ethical Issues by UK and German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Companies' European Accounting Review.
Endnotes
1 The grant was awarded to the first named author, the second named author acting as a research assistant on the project. This part of the
project has not yet been published although other aspects of the work have been published in Adams, C A (1999) 'The Nature and Processes of Corporate Reporting on Ethical Issues', CIMA research monograph, London: CIMA.
2 The approach was used in completing project work into specific aspects of the environment in which multinational corporations operate and their responses to that environment.
3 Encyclopedia of Global Industries (1999) London: Gale.
4 Key Note Market Review (1992) Hampton: Key Note Publications, Vol. 1.
5 For UK companies, addresses, telephone and fax numbers and world wide web addresses are provided in Key Note Market Reviews.
6 International Directory of Company Histories (1988) London: St James Press.
7 Directory of Multinationals: the Worlds Top 500 Companies (1998) 5th edition. London: Waterlow Specialist Information Publishing.
8 Hoover's Handbook of World Business (1998) Austin, tex.: Hoover's Business Press.
9 Dun & Bradstreet International, D & B Asean Series (1997) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet International.
10 Major Companies of the Far East and Australasia (1996) London: Graham & Whiteside.
11 Major Companies of Central & Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (1996) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet International. Major Companies of Europe (1998) London: Graham & Trotman. Major Companies of the Arab World (1995) London: Graham & Whiteside.
12 Department of Trade and Industry (1993) Business in Europe: guide to sources of advice London: HMSO.
13 Dun & Bradstreet International, D & B Europa (1997) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet International.
14 Who Owns Whom Continental Europe (1998) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet.
15 Hoover's Masterlist of Major US Companies (1996) Austin, Tex: Hoover's Business Press.
16 Germany's Top 500: A Handbook of Germany's Largest Corporations (1996) Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Information Services.
17 Macmillan Stock Exchange Yearbook (1999) London: Stock Exchange.
18 Key British Enterprises: Britain's Top 50,000 Companies. (1999) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet International.
19 Directory of Directors (1998) East Grinstead: Thomas Skinner Directories.
20 The Times 1000: Leading Companies In Britain And Overseas (1998) London: Times Newspapers.
21 Who Owns Whom United Kingdom & Republic Of Ireland (1998) High Wycombe: Dun & Bradstreet.
22 Britain's Top Privately Owned Companies (1995) Bristol: Jordans.
23 Britain's Top Foreign Owned Companies (1994) Bristol: Jordans.
24 Britain's Top Japanese Owned Companies (1994) Bristol: Jordans.
25 The 100 Best Companies to Work for in the UK (1997) London: Teach Yourself.
26 European Corporate Environmental Register (1997) London: Macmillan.
27 Check out their web site by searching on Alta Vista. It may be possible to communicate with the company, to ask them questions, to request publications and read the latest press releases.
28 General business or company internet sites include: Dow Jones, http://www.dowjones.com/; International Business Resources on the WWW, http://ciber.bus.msu.edu/busres.htm; AnswerConnect's article http://www.answerconnect.com/articles/the-best-business-directories-on-the-web.
30 www.ethicalconsumer.org/corporat.htm
33 www.haiweb.org, www.epo.de/bukopharma, www.camtech.net.au/malam, www.consumersinternational.org, www.eudra.org, www.panna.org, www.healthwrights.org, www.essential.org, www.who.int,
35 www.southbound.com.my/souths/cap/cap.htm
37 All the BIDS databases can be accessed with a password through www.bids.ac.uk/
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