35 years of research on business intelligence process: a synthesis of a fragmented literature

Abstract

Purpose The business intelligence (BI) research witnessed a proliferation of contributions during the past three decades, yet the knowledge about the interdependencies between the BI process and organizational context is scant. This has resulted in a proliferation of fragmented literature duplicating identical endeavors. Although such pluralism expands the understanding of the idiosyncrasies of BI conceptualizations, attributes and characteristics, it cannot cumulate existing contributions to better advance the BI body of knowledge. In response, this study aims to provide an integrative framework that integrates the interrelationships across the BI process and its organizational context and outlines the covered research areas and the underexplored ones. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews 120 articles spanning the course of 35 years of research on BI process, antecedents and outcomes published in top tier ABS ranked journals. Findings Building on a process framework, this review identifies major patterns and contradictions across eight dimensions, namely, environmental antecedents; organizational antecedents; managerial and individual antecedents; BI process; strategic outcomes; firm performance outcomes; decision-making; and organizational intelligence. Finally, the review pinpoints to gaps in linkages across the BI process, its antecedents and outcomes for future researchers to build upon. Practical implications This review carries some implications for practitioners and particularly the role they ought to play should they seek actionable intelligence as an outcome of the BI process. Across the studies this review examined, managerial reluctance to open their intelligence practices to close examination was omnipresent. Although their apathy is understandable, due to their frustration regarding the lack of measurability of intelligence constructs, managers manifestly share a significant amount of responsibility in turning out explorative and descriptive studies partly due to their defensive managerial participation. Interestingly, managers would rather keep an ineffective BI unit confidential than open it for assessment in fear of competition or bad publicity. Therefore, this review highlights the value open participation of managers in longitudinal studies could bring to the BI research and by extent the new open intelligence culture across their organizations where knowledge is overt, intelligence is participative, not selective and where double loop learning alongside scholars is continuous. Their commitment to open participation and longitudinal studies will help generate new research that better integrates the BI process within its context and fosters new measures for intelligence performance. Originality/value This study provides an integrative framework that integrates the interrelationships across the BI process and its organizational context and outlines the covered research areas and the underexplored ones. By so doing, the developed framework sets the ground for scholars to further develop insights within each dimension and across their interrelationships.

Big data analysis for decision-making processes: challenges and opportunities for the management of health-care organizations

“…This confirms the hypothesis that the over the years, quality has shifted from being an issue relating to care to being an issue relevant to the whole organization (Øvretveit and Gustafson, 2002). This trend reflects the results illustrated in the general literature on the role of big data in organizational decisionmaking, which provide important information which results in competitive advantage and improvement of the overall performance (Janssen et al, 2017;Cristofaro, 2017;Talaoui and Kohtamäki, 2020). Indeed the use of big data has a direct impact on the organizational procedures, which includes understanding of big data in supply chain and optimizing the data generation; importance of integrating and standardizing heterogeneous data types; and the use of several types of analytics to assimilate the findings into the business processes (Arunachalam et al, 2018).…”

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Revitalizing double‐loop learning in organizational contexts: A systematic review and research agenda

“…A first scrutiny of the studies led to the elimination of duplicate studies, reducing the number to 778. Then six non‐English studies were excluded, and we also omitted 102 conference papers and nine periodicals because their research rigor is inferior to journals and might not be subject to traditional peer review processes (Adams et al, 2017; Levy & Ellis, 2006; Talaoui & Kohtamäki, 2021; Webster & Watson, 2002). This screening reduced the number of studies to 661.…”

The value of competitive intelligence for an enterprise

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“…В последние годы все больше российских [13,14,15] и зарубежных [9,10,11] ученых уделяют внимание проблемам конкурентной разведки или бизнес-аналитики (определение зарубежных ученых). В непрерывно развивающейся среде рынка актуально постоянно обновлять информацию обо всех действиях, событиях внешней среды, обо всех решениях, реализуемых основными конкурентами для обеспечения долговременного и успешного функционирования на целевом рынке.…”