Potentials of big data for corporate environmental management. A case study from the German automotive industry

Integrating more sustainability into business processes is becoming increasingly important for companies. At the same time, they aim to collect and analyze large amounts of data (big data) to improve these processes. The potentials of big data for corporate environmental protection are hardly dealt with in the scientific literature. The main contribution of this paper is to identify potential big data use cases for corporate environmental management by using the example of the German automotive industry. For this purpose, expert interviews were conducted with corporate environmental managers which were evaluated by using a qualitative content analysis. In order to balance this environmental perspective and enhance it with data analytical expertise, these use cases were assessed by data analytics experts through a mixed method approach, in a subsequent process. The presentation of the identified five use cases and their critical reflection through data analytics experts are the key results of this paper.