Are HiPPOs losing power in organizational decision-making? : An exploratory study on the adoption of Big Data Analytics

Sammanfattning: Background: In the past decades, big data (BD) has become a buzzword which is associated with the opportunities of gaining competitive advantage and enhanced business performance. However, data in a vacuum is not valuable, but its value can be harnessed when used to drive decision-making. Consequently, big data analytics (BDA) is required to generate insights from BD. Nevertheless, many companies are struggling in adopting BDA and creating value. Namely, organizations need to deal with the hard work necessary to benefit from the analytics initiatives. Therefore, businesses need to understand how they can effectively manage the adoption of BDA to reach decision-making quality. The study answers the following research questions: What factors could influence the adoption of BDA in decision-making? How can the adoption of BDA affect the quality of decision-making? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the opportunities and challenges of adopting big data analytics in organizational decision-making. Method: Data is collected through interviews based on a theoretical framework. The empirical findings are deductively and inductively analysed to answer the research questions. Conclusion: To harness value from BDA, companies need to deal with several challenges and develop capabilities, leading to decision-maker quality. The major challenges of BDA adoption are talent management, leadership focus, organizational culture, technology management, regulation compliance and strategy alignment. Companies should aim to develop capabilities regarding: knowledge exchange, collaboration, process integration, routinization, flexible infrastructure, big data source quality and decision maker quality. Potential opportunities generated from the adoption of BDA, leading to improved decision-making quality, are: automated decision-making, predictive analytics and more confident decision makers.