The issue is that when you remove social and environmental ethical constraints, a lot of companies would become impressive in a technological, financial or managerial sense. But if you include them and measure 3M's, Dupont's etc. performance in a strong regulatory environment with good compliance, they earn decidedly unimpressive overall scores and can be seen as bunch of greedy, clever, selfish parasites, gaming the system.
That's why narrow statements praising one aspect of their performance paints half a picture. Like calling a war criminal an effective tactician - technically correct, but against the big picture, so what?
