A research forum published in Business & Society in 1995 (Issue 2) analyzed whether Fortune magazine's annual Reputation Survey (FRS) is viable as a corporate social performance (CSP) research database. We examine plausible alternative interpretations for a number of assertions and conclusions by the forum authors, including the premise for Brown and Perry's proposed transformation: that the Fortune data are confounded by the presence of a financial "halo," which biases ratings of nonfinancial attributes. Finally, we examine the appropriate roles of the two primary corporate rating systems in the context of CSP.
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