Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corporate Knights


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. After three full relistings and then some, no consensus for a particular outcome has transpired herein. Of note is that removed a significant amount of content from the article that could be construed as consisting of fluff, public relations and superfluous information during the course of this discussion (diff). Despite this, the Advert template placed in June 2012 remains in place atop the article. While AfD is not cleanup, the in-depth discussion herein could potentially lend to further article improvements. North America1000 10:00, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Corporate Knights

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Semi-advertorialized article about a company, not reliably sourced as passing WP:GNG or WP:CORPDEPTH. As always, companies are not automatically entitled to have Wikipedia articles just because they exist -- they must be the subject of sufficient media coverage to establish their significance. But this is referenced overwhelmingly to primary or unreliable sources that are not support for notability at all, such as its own self-published content about itself, the self-published websites of other affiliated organizations, media pieces that have the company's founder as a bylined author but not the subject, university student media, glancing namechecks of its existence in coverage about other things or people, and on and so forth. Out of 19 footnotes there's only one (#3, The Globe and Mail) that actually represents a mass media outlet writing and publishing third-party journalism about the company, and that's not enough. And even if it can actually be salvaged, it will have to be massively cleaned up for neutrality and structure, because a lot of the content isn't really appropriately written or formatted for an encyclopedia article. Bearcat (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep, but not strongly. While AFD isn't the place for clean-up, the promo tone is a valid concern and I'm a bit skeptical about this topic's notability. It's not quite as weak as the start of the nomination may have implied. GBooks indicates their work has been discussed in books and academic literature. A Google Scholar supports that search even more. I did find coverage of companies making their way onto a "Global 100" list Corporate Knights primarily runs, such as in The Guardian, The Fashion Law, this source, Food Business News, Monitor Daily, Fast Company, CNBC, Stockhouse, and the entire list has been discussed by The Toronto Star, the CEO magazine. Company itself also has been in Edie.net and for its other work, such as its study on the amount of Black CEOs being covered by the Toronto Star. It definitely shows the magazine has made a big name for its itself within the literature on ecological sustainability in companies, in the same Billboard has made a name for itself by being the official publisher on what is hot in popular music with its charts. However, that's not necessarily a lot of full in-depth coverage of the company itself, as a lot of the sources (although not all of it) are about the Global 100 chart. I don't know, maybe the article should be about Global 100 if most of the coverage relates the chart. 👨x🐱 (talk) 22:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Eddie891 Talk Work 22:09, 28 April 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:25, 5 May 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete - Effectively advertorial, very little by way of real notable coverage of the business itself Dexxtrall (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 00:56, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Promotional article, lacks meaningful coverage to establish notability. MrsSnoozyTurtle 01:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Columns in the National Post:  The columnist notes: "The following is a review of material published in the spring, 2005, issue of Corporate Knights, The Canadian Magazine for Responsible Business, distributed last week in The Globe and Mail." The negative review of the magazine concludes, "The magazine ends with the ranking of business schools on the basis of their promotion of corporate social responsibility and general ability to begin turning out thousands of corporate Che Gueveras to fill the ranks of modern corporate communism." The negative review drew a letter from Corporate Knights's editor: The letter notes: "Nowhere did Mr. Corcoran show his partisanship for a yesteryear more accutely than when he dismissed us as communists because we pointed the obvious: that today's large corporations are owned by the average canadian."</li> <li> The columnist notes: "Corporate Knights's ideology is exposed by its Animal Farm semantics. It dubs itself "the company for clean capitalism." Now children, let's see if you can work out what that makes any capitalism who doesn't reach, or submit to, the rankings? That's right, kiddies, they're dirty capitalists." </li> <li> The columnist notes: "There fell solemnly from a recent Saturday edition of a Canadian newspaper a well-printed, stapled booklet of 50 pages, on magazine stock, called Corporate Knights. ... The magazine is a quarterly and has a staff of 25 named people, including interns, and didn't have much advertising."</li> </li></ol> <li> The abstract notes: "This study examines sustainability reports of the Corporate Knights' “Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies in the World” in order to examine if and how they have been affected by Arturo Escobar's original critique of sustainable development (SD)."</li> <li> The article notes: "Corporate Knights -- a Canadian magazine highlighting responsibility in the business sector -- published its first issue in June, mere weeks before WorldCom Inc. announced it had fudged its 2001 earnings. ... Published quarterly, Corporate Knights has a circulation of 104,500 and is distributed for free through The Globe and Mail. Bulk copies are also sent to companies that request them. The magazine acquires almost all of its revenue from advertisements, the majority of which are for mutual fund companies specializing in SRI."</li> <li> The article notes: "So he started Corporate Knights: The Canadian Magazine for Responsible Business with a couple of buddies in 2002, and made a $20,000 profit on the first issue. How? With a brilliant concept: The 50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada. The first step: to create the rankings and attract attention, which he did by asking the CEOs of the 100 largest companies in Canada to define corporate social responsibility in the 21st century. Most responded. ... With 100,000 copies of Corporate Knights distributed that June by the Globe and Mail (with full page ads from Alcan, Scotiabank, Biovail, Suncor, EnCana etc.), Heaps and his managing editor Paul Fengler stated in their first editorial: ..."</li> <li> The article notes: "The winners are selected by Corporate Knights, a one-year-old quarterly publication circulating to some 104,000 business readers across Canada. ... Corporate Knights examined and ranked the performance of 100 companies based on seven criteria: community relations, international practices, product safety, business practices, corporate governance, employee relations and diversity."</li> <li> The article notes: "Mr. Heaps, who has degrees in economics and international development, started Corporate Knights in 2002. The quarterly magazine, which has a national circulation of about 100,000, is on a mission to make businesses more responsible and promote a sustainable economy. The magazine is mailed to all MPs, senators and the country's top 1,000 CEOs. A recent issue ranked Canada's 50 biggest greenhouse gas polluters, while another graded grocery stores on their sustainability."</li> <li> The book notes: "Nike also earned a spot, along with 19 other U.S. companies, on the Global 100 list compiled in 2009 by Corporate Knights, Inc. and Innovest Strategic Value Advisers. [list of companies] The winning companies are recognized each year at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland." The book notes about Corporate Knights magazine: "This particular magazine, published by the Canadian-based Corporate Knights media company, has the largest circulation of any publication focused solely on responsible business." The book further notes: "The Global 100 project, launched in 2005, was initiated by Corporate Knights with research support from the New York-based investment advisory firm known as Innovest Strategic Advisors. ..."</li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Corporate Knights to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 09:35, 17 May 2021 (UTC) </li></ul>
 * Not all of these sources are actually about Corporate Knights in any non-trivial way; several just glancingly namecheck its existence in the process of being about something else, which is not a type of source that helps to establish the notability of Corporate Knights. Bearcat (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete The appropriate SNG for corporations is WP:NCORP which places a higher standard of scrutiny on sources used to establish notability. Quoting the GNG, which has a less strict standard, does not mean the references meet the appropriate standard. Looking at the references above and applying NCORP shows not a single reference meets NCORP as follows:
 * 1.1 from the National Post - the article is commenting on one issue of the magazine published by the company. It provides no in-depth information on the actual company, fails WP:CORPDEPTH, the letter commenting on the article likewise fails CORPDEPTH
 * 1.2 from the National Post - the article discusses an award issued by the company and in particular, heavily criticizes the methodology underpinning the award. There is one part one paragraph that comments on the company's own ideology but nowhere else is the company itself discussed, it fails to provide in-depth information on the company and fails CORPDEPTH
 * 1.3 from the National Post - the article, like 1.1 above, discusses one issue of the magazine and provides no in-depth info on the company itself, fails CORPDEPTH
 * 2 from the "Environmental Communication" journal uses, as the basis for a study, the list of companies appearing the the topic companies' "Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies in the World" list. Fails CORPDEPTH
 * 3 from the Globe and Mail provides some discussion and information on the company but the problem for me is that it is also clear that the journalist interviewed executives from the company. In some parts the information is provided in the article by way of quotations and in others, there are statements. One paragraph in particular provides in statement for information about how the company distributes their magazine and then later reverts to quotations. WP:ORGIND states that references must include original and independent opinion, analysis, investigation, and fact checking that are clearly attributable to a source unaffiliated to the subject and I am not convinced that the author didn't get the information provided in statement form from the company or as part of the interview as the data is not attributable to a third party source. Therefore fails WP:ORGIND
 * 4 from the Toronto Star is a profile on the co-founder, Toby A.A. Heaps. It does not provide information on this company and fails WP:CORPDEPTH. But in my opinion, this article could be used to justify an article on Mr. Heaps (and perhaps some of the information in this article could be used in an article on Heaps)
 * 5 is from Hamilton Spectator and discusses various companies that appears in the list of Canada's 50 best corporate citizens. It doesn't discuss the company, fails WP:CORPDEPTH
 * 6 is from the Chronicle Herald and is an interview with Mr. Heaps with a single generic paragraph describing the company, fails WP:CORPDEPTH.
 * 7 is from a book on Nike where is comments on Nike's inclusion in one of this company's lists and also includes quotations from Heaps and information provided by the company, fails both CORPDEPTH and ORGIND.
 * There is not a single reference that meets the criteria for establishing notability once you apply the correct and appropriate guidelines for companies/organizations. That said, I believe that Mr. Heaps would likely meet notability guidelines for a standalone article. <b style="font-family: Courier; color: darkgreen;"> HighKing</b>++ 15:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. The material on the magazine can be used to show the notability of the publisher, (though of course no tthe other way around). Sometimes in situations like this we make the article primarily about the magazine, but the company does significant other things also. The National Post material taken as a whole represents continuing comprehensive coverage of the organization & its magazine. Rejecting it as a source for notability because no one part of their coverage deals with all aspects is looking at sourcing much too  narrowly. A study of the lists they produce is a study of their work, and what companies as well a people are known for is their work, not their internal organization.   The real problem with the article is the extreme promotional   writing and name-dropping, and omission of the more negative conservative sources. (This is a classic case where an article attracts deletion because it is written in an outrageously excessive way, where a more modest article would not really be noticed).   I have   removed most of the excess. Adding the more critical sources  and condensing further I leave to someone else.   DGG ( talk ) 19:41, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Saying it is incorrect to reject a source because no one part deals with all aspects is precisely the way NCORP is written. If you want to have an article about the company, then the sourcing must be spot on. Whats really happening here is that the "Top 100" lists published by the magazine get attention - the companies mentioned love them, newspapers love them, etc. Saying that the publisher is therefore notable is a stretch and in my opinion, is precisely the type of promotional article we don't want. Just my 2c. <b style="font-family: Courier; color: darkgreen;"> HighKing</b>++ 12:27, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.