Influence of Big Data & Analytics on Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper summarizes current corporate policy activities through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In this context, the use of Big Data & Analytics (BD&A) will be discussed. The main purpose of the research is the pursuit of CSR, as the topic has been enormously advanced for companies in recent years. And there are many reasons for this. The consumption of the environment, the deposition of residues into air, ground and water by companies and also the labor conditions within the work environment is on outmost interest of the society. Companies try to avoid respectively reduce the negative impact that comes along with their value creation processes due to their competitive situation, public pressure, marketing reasons or because they are forced by legal requirements and regulations. Those improvements are often publicized in CSR/sustainability reports. Many companies set themselves CSR targets that refer to a particular baseline. With doing so the companies can find the right areas for improvement, measure their progress, apply different methodologies and create measures to further enhance their situation. Some of those measures are driven by digitalization and with the progress that is made within this area of research new opportunities to reduce the negative impact arise. The potential that lies within digitalization to improve CSR indicators is widely underestimated. To emphasize the impact that digitalization can have on the value creation process, a very specific methodology from the field of digitalization, the analysis of big data, was chosen exemplarily for this analysis. The systematization of research and approaches to solving the problem will show that Big Data & Analytics is underemployed in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility. The research results summarized in the paper confirm and prove that companies need not be primarily interested in CSR. Economic interests usually go hand in hand with this. To make Big Data & Analytics a contributor to Corporate Social Responsibility investments are necessary. The potential of Big Data & Analytics that is elaborated in this article can help to justify the investments into this field of application. The paper is processed in the following logical order: After an introductory section, Big Data & Analytics will present its contribution to Corporate Social Responsibility. After establishing a hypothesis, the analysis part comes in the form of a field application. In the further course, the influence of CSR on the Internet of Things (IoT) will be dealt with in a business case. The article will give an insight into the sustainability reports of the companies BMW, Deutsche Telekom and the Linde Group. The topics CSR and BD&A in the automotive industry will be investigated, as well. The expected savings in energy consumption by BD&DA are discussed here. The paper is concluded with a critical appraisal.