Introduction
The Industrial Management Institute has prepared a ranking of Iran's top
companies for many consecutive years now. Inspired by the institute’s mission, this list creates a clearer
atmosphere of the country's economics and businesses through providing transparent, meaningful
stats and info about the Iranian economic enterprises. This helps managers, policymakers and
researchers in reaching a more accurate understanding of the scale and the financial/economic
structure of the country's major industries and enterprises.
The Top 100 Companies List belongs to major Iranian companies in a way. Due to IMI’s national
macro view in creating this list, the main focus is on identifying the interrelated status of
the country's major enterprises. In other words, due to the extensive back-and-forth
communications between Iran's largest companies, their boom and bust will quickly manifest in
all levels of the country's economy; therefore, by preparing these rankings, IMI endeavors to
annually paint a reliable quantitative statistics-backed picture on how the changes in the
arrangement of large Iranian enterprises and various industries and economic activities work
alongside each other. The dynamism, consistency, and acceleration of the development process in
enterprises, and consequently the national economy, relies on a comprehensive, correct cognition
of the strengths and weaknesses of their economic activities; the strength or weakness are
conceptually relative and dependent on comparison, hence the comparison of the Iranian
industries and enterprises against each other provides a context that can be a beneficial guide
for managers, policymakers, and investors, and also help researchers view the business
environment from new perspectives.
In recent years, the changes in this picture that have occurred or are just shaping up
constantly, can have different implications or inferences from different perspectives for the
viewer. Meanwhile, the gradual fall in the rankings of companies operating in a certain industry
within a multi-year trend, would signify an unjustified investment, or an increase in
opportunity costs, for domestic or foreign investors. To economic policymakers, this may be a
sign to increase their efforts in finding solutions or identifying problems; for the researchers
however, the shifts in the rankings of the Top 100 Companies List are opportunities for
scientific research. For the CEO of an enterprise that is ranked among the top 100, a shift in
their ranking could be a good time to review the performance and identify the new strengths and
weaknesses. There are other examples, but let’s suffice to the above.
This macro/national-level standpoint, along with the attention to the demands of the project
beneficiaries on one hand, and the consideration for the availability of quantitatively reliable
statistics and the relative nature of the rankings on the other hand, are the reason that the
indicators’ type implemented in these rankings are selected and refined in line with the purpose
of the plan.
As a first step in doing so, the list that compares companies and enterprises from a macro and
national perspective in order to paint a picture of the arrangement of the enterprises within
the Iranian business environment, is a general list. In fact, all the economic activities
(services, industrial, etc.) can essentially compete with each other in the allocation of
society's resources, will be put together in the same list. The second step is to set the sales
criterion as the basis for the selection of the top 100 companies. As the final step, these
selected companies are compared from different perspectives, with several indicators that are
mentioned later.
The economic effectiveness of an enterprise’s activity at national level is directly correlated
to the company's sales volume. The sales volume of a company shows the degree of interaction
between a firm and the economic structure of the country, and the more the firm interacts with
other economic components, the more its prosperity and recession gains important. Therefore, the
selection and ranking of companies based on the ‘sales volume’ index follows an economic and
managerial logic. Basically, the issue of ‘corporate growth’ is of special importance and status
in economics and management. ‘Sales’ is the most important final output in any commercial
company, and the ‘sales process’ in particular, shows the outcome of the interaction of many
quantitative and qualitative, internal and external, factors of the company. Also, entering the
global competition arena is only possible for large companies (with high sales).
This comparison and ranking is based on the financial info disclosed in the financial statements
of the companies, which has been obtained through the public call, direct correspondences, and
numerous subsequent follow-ups. We hereby thank all those companies for their cooperation.
