Strathclyde sets standards for Scotland’s top PLCs

Strathclyde Business School (SBS) ensured the success of Scottish PLC Awards 2008, Scotland’s leading corporate annual awards event, by setting the standards for participating companies.

Since the inaugural awards were launched by Scottish Business Insider magazine and PriceWaterhouseCoopers back in 1998, SBS academics have played a key role in setting the criteria for each award category and assessing eligible companies.

This year, to mark the 10th anniversary of these awards, Strathclyde has devised criteria for 2 new awards for Scotland’s top PLCs – “Contribution of the Decade” and the “Sustainability” award.

Co-ordinated by SBS’ Business Information Manager, Christine Reid, the process is a complex, exercise involving around eight academics interviewing key staff from around 10 companies. Reid comments, “the detailed research and analysis of all Scottish plcs carried out enhances the overall credibility of the Awards process. A wide range of evidence is studied each year as our role as Research Sponsor is to carry out a rigorous process of independent research.”

At this year’s awards dinner on 24 April, Glasgow Hilton, Professor Susan Hart, Dean, SBS delivered the pre-award ceremony address and called upon Scottish business to develop its relationship with Strathclyde “to work together to increase our national investment in knowledge skills, innovation and sustainable international achievements.”

Stagecoach scooped the top award of “Scottish plc of Year”, and Aberdeen Asset Management boss, Martin Gilbert, took home the “PLC CEO of the Year” trophy. Royal Bank of Scotland won both of the new award categories – “Sustainability” for its commitment to community banking, renewable energy and efforts to engage employees in environmental initiatives, and the “Outstanding Contribution of the Decade” for its "breathtaking" growth.