Big data, big decisions: The impact of big data on board level decision-making

Abstract

The paper explores whether 'Big Data' (BD) has changed the process of board-level strategic decision-making. To enable a rich understanding of the issues, we gained access to directors of UK-based global organizations who were routinely involved in high-level strategic decision-making, undertaking lengthy semi-structured interviews.The quality of the data achieved is therefore a distinctive feature of our study. Our data reveal important findings in three broad areas. First, we explore the cognitive capabilities of board directors, and find evidence of a shortfall in cognitive capabilities in relation to BD, as well as issues with cognitive biases and cognitive overload.Second, we reveal the challenges to board cohesion presented by BD, including disruption to the processes of strategic decision-making, and temporal challenges relating to the speed of BD and decision-making. Finally, we show how BD is impacting on responsibility and control within senior teams, with boards undertaking reconfiguration activity, and in some instances drawing heavily on external stakeholders in order to address gaps in internal capabilities. We draw out key learning points in the context of both a knowledge-based view of the firm and a cognitive and dynamic capabilities perspective.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic marketing decision-making: a research agenda

“…Digitally supported marketing allows an initiative to move from an idea or concept to execution in weeks or even days, compared to the months or years suggested in classic marketing (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). More generally, the impact of big data on board decisions has been researched by Merendino et al (2018). The impact of the digitisation of data on board decisions has been explored by Dibb et al (2015).…”

From Big Data to Big Performance – Exploring the Potential of Big Data for Enhancing Public Organizations’ Performance. A Systematic Literature Review

“…Other authors emphasize the importance of human aspects, like analytical skills or managers' abilities (e.g. Akhtar, Frynas, Mellahi, & Ullah, 2019;Merendino et al, 2018). On the other hand, some scholars focus more on organizational aspects like for example organizational agility (e.g.…”

“…However, to generate value from CRM Analytics, they argue that "it needs to be transformed into a dynamic capability" (Sena et al, 2019, p. 224). In semi-structured interviews, Merendino et al (2018) explored if big data has an influence on board level decision making. They found that there are limited capabilities for dealing with big data at that level and suggest that boards need to develop valuable big data capabilities.…”

Big data analytics and business failures in data-Rich environments: An organizing framework

“…Prior studies have emphasised the increasingly important component of BDA in organisational decision-making processes (Merendino et al, 2018;Hagel, 2015). Given that BDA is considered as "a major differentiator between high-performing and low-performing organizations" (Liu, 2014, p. 40-42), it can be argued that BDA can ultimately be utilised or to help explain why some organisations fail and others survive and enjoy continuous success in this era of big data.…”