Applied Materials, Inc. today announced it has been recognized as a 2015 World’s Most Ethical Company by the Ethisphere Institute.

“Applied Materials’ reputation as a trusted business partner is one of our most valuable assets,” said Chad Fentress, vice president, Global Ethics and Compliance at Applied Materials. “I am proud of our employees for doing business the right way, every day and I look forward to upholding our strong tradition of ethical conduct in the future.”

This is the fourth consecutive year Applied Materials has received the annual award, which recognizes organizations that foster a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the company.

“The World’s Most Ethical Companies embrace the correlation between ethical business practice and improved company performance. These companies use ethics as a means to further define their industry leadership and understand that creating an ethical culture and earning the World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition involves more than just an outward facing message or a handful of senior executives saying the right thing,” said Ethisphere’s CEO, Timothy Erblich. “Earning this recognition involves the collective action of a global workforce from the top down. We congratulate everyone at Applied Materials for this extraordinary achievement.”

Now in its ninth year, the World’s Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient(TM) (EQ) framework developed over years of research to provide a means to assess an organization’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way.