Some surprises in the latest breakdown of the world's best corporate citizens.

The list prepared by the Reputation Institute, which based its findings of a survey 30,000 citizens around the world, and which is published by Forbes has Wal-Mart right at the top, followed by McDonalds and Microsoft.

Not exactly three companies that have induced a warm and fuzzy glow, not with the broader public anyway.

Studies like this point to one very obvious issue: corporate social responsibility and a company's reputation are more complex than many like to believe. As you'd expect when there are so many stakeholders in play, many with conflicting needs and agendas.

When you boil it down, the biggest conundrum around corporate social responsibility is quite simple: who is the company responsible to? The stakeholders, or its owners, the shareholders?

These questions are explored quite well in this piece Is Corporate Social Responsibility Responsible?The author, Betsy Atkins, says the investing and consumer public sees corporate social responsibility as something that comes down to a few basic things: transparency in financial reporting, producing a quality product, and not misrepresenting it, being upfront and forthright if the product endangers the public, not engaging in offshore manufacturing practices like child labour, not polluting the environment, adhering to laws and regulations and being respectful, fair and open in employment practices.

These are all fairly straightforward but corporations still struggle with this sort of stuff.

A report by the Conference Board Reward trumps risk: How business perspectives on corporate citizenship and sustainability are changing reveals that while companies say that corporate citizenship and sustainability are of growing importance, most of them don't know what to do about it and don't have an active strategy to manage it. And the biggest challenge is actually measuring the stuff.

Indeed, for all the rhetoric about the triple bottom line, we still don't have the social, environmental and ethical equivalents of revenue, expenses, equity, assets and liabilities. I explore this, and other problems with triple bottom line spin in my piece here.

And until that's resolved, corporate beauty contests like the one from the Reputation Institute will always produce surprises.