This special issue of Knowledge@HEC highlights several research projects and teaching initiatives at HEC Paris in the context of big data and business analytics. Nowadays it does not take much to convince students or managers alike of the importance of data for businesses. As Wedel and Kannan (2016) put it, “data is the oil of the digital economy”. Indeed, data is completely transforming organizations, and data-driven decision making is becoming more and more a part of a company’s core. In an increasing digital world, all of us are walking data generators, leaving long data trails: we have more data on everything.
Can standards and other regulatory devices established by corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices be likened to legal rules and standards? Yes, according to Law professors David Restrepo Amariles and Arnaud Van Waeyenberge, who have demonstrated that CSR increasingly operates as a genuine normative system and can even stand in for the law. This is an important development in a time when, as illustrated by the 2017 list of the 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World, corporations, especially in France, are increasingly proactive when it comes to CSR practices.
By David Restrepo Amariles , Arnaud Van Waeyenberge
