Google Inc. had the best reputation for overall corporate responsibility, according to a recent global survey. It was followed by the Walt Disney Co. and then the toymaker LEGO Group.

The survey, Global CR RepTrak, calls itself the largest annual study of its kind and is based on more than 230,000 ratings by individuals in 15 countries. It was conducted by the Reputation Institute, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, consultant that works with companies on enhancing their brand image.

The survey ranked the top 100 global companies after looking at three key categories: corporate governance, citizenship and workplace, as well as the various factors they entail.

Google, which ranked third in the 2017 survey, moved up primarily because it was ranked first in citizenship and was the only company that scored “strong” in the workplace category. It was seen as “a leader in equal opportunities, employee well being and rewards,” the survey noted.

The survey was taken in January and February, before Google's belated announcement on Oct. 8 that it was shutting down its social network Google+ after the company uncovered a security weakness months earlier, in March, that might have exposed the private information of hundreds of thousands of users. It also was before President Donald Trump's accusations in September that Google has been rigging the results of its search engine to suppress conservative viewpoints, which the company has denied.

“Google's success is even more remarkable in the context of reputational challenges for the technology sector as a whole in 2018,” the report said. “Of all sectors, the technology industry experienced the largest decline in [overall] corporate responsibility rankings.” Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

The report noted that Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, spoke out about society values in the past year, including against the Trump administration's immigration policies and specifically against the deportation of “dreamers.” He also was in the news for firing a male employee who wrote a memo saying women were less fit than men for tech careers.

Three of the survey's top 10 companies (Google, Disney and Microsoft Corp.) are based in the U.S.; two are in Denmark (LEGO and Novo Nordisk), while the other five are located in Brazil (Naturo), Germany (Bosch), Japan (Canon), France (Michelin) and Sweden (Ikea).

The LEGO Group, which in 2018 started replacing its plastic source material for its toys, was the only company to score “strong” in the governance category. Its website states, “The LEGO Group is committed to caring for the environment and the society that children will inherit, and to inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow.”

According to the report, companies' high corporate responsibility scores often correlate with gains in financial results. And a “5 percent increase in CR score yields a 7.7 percent increase in willingness to invest in [a] company,” it said.

Novo Nordisk, which ranked fifth overall, was the only pharma company in the top 30. The report did not offer a possible reason for that, except that it scored high in “trust.”

For the first time, the report removed the word “social” from the corporate responsibility phrase, saying it wanted to place equal emphasis on other aspects of being a responsible company, such as environmental and fiscal.