The notion of corporate success lies at the heart of directors’ duties in many corporate laws. Freedom of incorporation conferred considerable discretion on companies to determine the nature of their success and create financial value for their investors, subject to conforming with laws and regulation. However, this increasingly came into conflict with the interests of other stakeholders, in particular employees, supply chains, the environment and societies, and addressing the problem through specific regulatory rules proved inadequate to the task. This raises questions about the nature of the financial incentives that drive and resource corporate activities, namely profits, and the need to align these with the role of business in solving not creating problems for others. In the absence of such an alignment then markets fail and competition can intensify rather diminish the failures. There are three aspects to addressing the problem. The first is the use of corporate law to require companies to consider the interests of stakeholders other than their shareholders. This is already a feature of many corporate laws. The second is corporate governance codes that promote corporate purposes of profiting from solving not causing problems for others. This too is already a feature of some countries’ corporate governance arrangements. The third is the adoption of international standards and firm specific measures of performance that promote accounting and reporting on corporate social and environmental benefits and detriments. These are in the process of being established but need to be more closely related to accounting for specific firm measures of performance that ensure profits derive from solving not creating problems for others.

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s key findings, methodology and structure. It also introduces the principal questions the book seeks to address. How have agents, operating at national, international and transnational levels, attempted to institutionalise the norm of corporate accountability for human rights violations linked to transnational corporate activity? What do these initiatives reveal about the nature of transnational legalisation, and how legalisation should be framed or conceptualised in the twenty-first century? Finally, could a revised framework of legalisation help explain when transnational litigation and soft law initiatives are more likely to succeed in the future?

This chapter focuses on data collection methods, analysis approaches, and evaluation techniques in data science. It covers various data collection methods including surveys (with different question types like multiple-choice, Likert scales, and open-ended questions), interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and user studies in lab and field settings.

The chapter distinguishes between quantitative methods (using numerical measurements and statistical analysis) and qualitative methods (observing behaviors, attitudes, and opinions through techniques like grounded theory and constant comparison). It also discusses mixed-method approaches that combine both methodologies.

For evaluation, the chapter explains model comparison metrics including precision, recall, F-measure, ROC curves, AIC, and BIC. It covers validation techniques like training-testing splits, A/B testing, and cross-validation methods. The chapter emphasizes that data science involves pre-data collection planning and post-analysis evaluation, not just data processing.

Telework presents two quite distinct faces: longer, more irregular work schedules; yet potentially a better reconciliation of work and family life, provided it is promoted. Yet the outcomes are clearly ambivalent. Teleworking in itself is no guarantee of co-responsibility or the transformation of gender roles. There is a risk that it is perceived as the most ‘appropriate’ working arrangement for women, in a way that perpetuates gender roles and, even, widens the labour gap. To address this danger, socio-economic and cultural alliances, policies and regulations must all row in the same direction and take steps to eliminate patriarchal structures and systemic discrimination This contribution emphasizes that telework is not gender-neutral because it brings paid work into the domestic sphere, a traditionally feminine domain where productive and reproductive spaces overlap. The chapter analyses the impact that labour legislation and business practices have on women, and explores issues to which teleworking gives rise in relation to working time and work–life balance. Additionally, and with the focus more firmly on business practices, the work addresses the opportunities afforded by telework as a working-time arrangement.

This chapter develops a synthetic framework for understanding jurisdictional arbitrage – a practice as old as taxation itself, yet still lacking a unified theory. While classical arbitrage exploits price differentials, jurisdictional arbitrage exploits mismatches between legal and regulatory systems across sovereign states. Drawing on foundational works by Fleischer, Riles, Partnoy, Pistor, and O’Hara and Ribstein, the chapter distinguishes five key forms of arbitrage: financial, tax, regulatory, reporting/liability, and jurisdictional. Jurisdictional arbitrage, in particular, arises from fragmented sovereignty and the spatial dissociation of legal and economic activities. Unlike domestic regulatory arbitrage, it operates across borders to create dual pricing regimes – what Partnoy calls the ‘law of two prices’. Legal coding, in Pistor’s terms, transforms assets into capital, reinforcing disparities. Sophisticated corporate structures – especially those of MNCs – strategically arbitrage these regimes through complex transactions, legal wrappers, and intangible assets. Jurisdictional arbitrage thus emerges not as market distortion, but as a core mechanism of corporate strategy and power. By integrating insights from law, economics, and political economy, this chapter repositions arbitrage from a marginal tactic to a systemic institutional practice central to contemporary capitalism.

Some of the most decisive battles over the responsibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) have been fought in domestic courtrooms – often far from where the alleged abuses occurred. The United States has hosted a substantial proportion of such cases against TNCs, supported by a legal framework that historically provided several plaintiff-friendly avenues. However, the landscape has become more challenging following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and Daimler AG v. Bauman. In Canada, the absence of an ATS-equivalent and the application of the doctrine of forum non conveniens have limited opportunities for litigation. However, recent decisions suggest more cases may flow to Canada in the future. In the United Kingdom, developments in the law relating to parent company liability have been particularly significant. In Across continental Europe, barriers such as limited access to class actions, prosecutorial discretion, and weak disclosure obligations continue to constrain transnational human rights litigation.

Remote work in Korea rapidly accelerated mainly with digitalization and covid-19, posing challenging issues for traditional labor law in this country. The practice of long working hours, and the crisis of the country’s low birth rate and aging population demand fundamental changes of working style. With the development of information and communication technology, traditional ways of direct command and supervision by employers seem to be reduced, while the discretion of workers expanded. However, technologies themselves also make possible more detailed direction by employers - even by the contractors of the employers. The character of the employment contract as a mutual contract presupposes fair distribution of obligation and responsibility. Changing situations surrounding working conditions such as remote work may encourage the re-distribution of responsibility. This chapter explores the impact of remote work on the employers’ responsibility from the standpoint of the response by Korean regulation and policies.

Critics of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment have argued that business managers should be concerned with maximizing profits rather than getting involved in politics. Defenders of ESG have responded by arguing that investors are free to put their money wherever they like, and so ESG investment practices represent an ordinary exercise of commercial freedom. This simple response glosses over an important complication, which is that the relationship between investors and business managers is mediated by a set of agency relationships, between investors and fund managers, and between fund managers and corporate boards. These agency relations are not completely open-ended but rather are subject to constraints. A question arises about whether any of the political demands associated with ESG investment practices exceed the proper limits of these agency relationships. This chapter assesses this question in order to determine whether ESG leads agents to violate any duties arising from their relations to principals.

This chapter introduces cloud computing platforms essential for modern data science work. It covers three major cloud services: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Students learn to create virtual machines, configure storage, and access cloud resources through SSH connections. The chapter demonstrates hands-on Python development using browser-based IDEs like Google Colab, Azure Machine Learning notebooks, and AWS Cloud9. Key topics include setting up accounts, managing costs through free tiers, and leveraging cloud resources for data science projects. The chapter also covers Hadoop for big data processing and discusses platform migration strategies. Practical exercises guide students through currency conversion programs, interactive calculations, and Olympic year predictions, emphasizing that cloud computing skills are now essential for data science professionals due to scalable processing power and storage capabilities.

This chapter introduces machine learning as a subset of artificial intelligence that enables computers to learn from data and make predictions without explicit programming. It defines machine learning through Tom Mitchell’s formal framework and explores real-world applications like self-driving cars, optical character recognition, and recommendation systems. The chapter focuses on regression as a fundamental machine learning technique, covering both linear modeling approaches and gradient descent algorithms for parameter optimization. Through hands-on examples using R, students learn to implement linear regression and gradient descent from scratch, understanding how models minimize error functions to find optimal parameters. The chapter emphasizes practical application over theoretical derivations.

This chapter introduces cloud computing platforms essential for modern data science work. It covers the three major providers: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Key topics include setting up virtual machines, configuring SSH access, and running RStudio Server in browser-based environments on each platform. The chapter demonstrates how to migrate data science workflows from local machines to cloud infrastructure, providing scalable computing resources and storage.

Practical examples show installing R and RStudio on cloud VMs, accessing them through web browsers, and managing costs. The chapter emphasizes that cloud computing skills are now essential for data science practitioners, offering dynamic scaling, redundancy, and pay-as-you-use pricing models for computational resources.

The Introduction opens with the Apple tax hearings to illustrate how major multinationals exploit jurisdictional mismatches to avoid taxation and regulation. These cases introduce the concept of jurisdictional arbitrage – strategic exploitation of legal fragmentation across states – and highlight the centrality of the corporate group form known as the CCMCE. These entities operate as unified economic actors but are legally fragmented to minimise liability, taxation, and disclosure. Drawing on empirical data from the CORPLINK project, the chapter shows how jurisdictional arbitrage is not a marginal or exceptional tactic but a systemic strategy at the heart of contemporary capitalism. It critiques prevailing theories in economics, political science, and international business for treating multinational corporations (MNCs) as unitary actors, and instead proposes that power is exercised through legal design and regulatory ambiguity. Arbitrage, in this account, is not a breach of rules, but the strategic use of compliance itself to achieve dominance. By reframing arbitrage as a political and legal technology of power, the chapter calls for a rethinking of how MNCs are analysed – as architects of regulatory gaps rather than mere players in global markets.

This chapter examines the emergence of the CCMCE, a legal/structural innovation that transformed the multinational firm into a constellation of legally separate but operationally unified corporate entities. Tracing its origins to the late nineteenth century, the CCMCE emerged from evolving doctrines of corporate personhood, limited liability, and the state’s adoption of territorial sovereignty as a legal principle. The pivotal shift occurred with New Jersey’s holding company laws (1888–96), enabling corporations to own other corporations and organize control through pyramidal structures. Combined with the formal recognition of intangible property – such as goodwill and future income streams – this model allowed firms to optimize control, risk, and regulatory positioning across jurisdictions. The CCMCE’s international diffusion, initially driven by practical business needs, soon enabled new forms of jurisdictional arbitrage, as corporate groups leveraged legal fragmentation to separate tangible operations from regulatory liabilities. By embedding the firm in a network of legally autonomous subsidiaries, the CCMCE model created opportunities to exploit the ‘law of two prices’ and selectively engage national regulatory regimes.