Corporate Law and Corporate Governance
Data Supply Chains
23 November 2026 (Monday), 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Rm 723, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Data is an essential resource for artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Yet policymakers, scholars, and corporate leaders largely overlook the upstream governance of data sourcing, focusing instead on downstream issues such as privacy, surveillance, and ethical data use. This Article argues that existing governance approaches fail to recognize data acquisition as a “data supply chain”: interconnected transactions through which organizations acquire, transfer, and transform data to support their products and services. It makes two contributions. First, it develops a typology of the principal methods of data acquisition and explains how they interact to form data supply chains. Second, it identifies risks that remain invisible when data acquisition is treated as isolated transactions rather than as part of an interconnected network. Like physical supply chains, disruptions to data supply chains can generate systemic and multi-sectoral risks. The Article proposes applying supply chain resilience strategies to strengthen the governance of this essential digital infrastructure.
Speaker:
Prof Kish Parella, James P. Morefield Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law
Kish Parella is the James P. Morefield Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Her research examines the intersection of international law, corporate governance, and business regulation, with particular emphasis on how international law shapes corporate conduct. Her scholarship explores corporate accountability for human rights, directors’ oversight responsibilities, global supply chains, and the governance of emerging technologies. She is a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. She is also Co-Founder of Gray Dawn Breaking, a research and advisory firm connecting academic scholarship with business and policy practice.
Chair:
Prof James Zeng, AIIFL Fellow and Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
More information about the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL), please visit https://aiifl.law.hku.hk/