Data In, Decisions Out?” – How the Presence of Big Data Affects Strategizing A Strategy as Practice Approach in a Single Case Study at DNV
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2022-06-06
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en
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Although big data is claimed to have significant strategic potential vis-à-vis business value creation and organizational performance and is revolutionizing the way organizations operate and do business, there is a striking lack of micro-level knowledge on how these organizations and its actors actually embrace and routinize big data into their strategizing activities in practice. To this end, the aim of this thesis is to contribute to this limited knowledge by empirically exploring how an organization and its actors actually integrate big data into strategizing in practice. To do so, an abductive grounded theory case study was conducted, in which a strategy as practice and a sociomaterial affordance lens was employed to empirically explore this understudied phenomenon.
The empirical findings showed that the extent to which and how big data is leveraged for strategic purposes depends on the affordances and constraints practitioners (employees) perceive to this end. Correspondingly, two data-driven discourses were identified: the data analytics ‘affordance’ discourse and the data analytics ‘constraints’ discourse. Over time, both discourses and their associated convictions took shape in practice through a variety of micro-level data analytics affordance, constraints and resulting accountability practices. As such, (big) data-driven strategizing was identified, and defined as being constructed through the temporal interaction between data analytics affordance practices and data analytics constraints practices, with ‘affordance’ practices reinforcing and ‘constraints’ practices diminishing the extent to which big data is leveraged in strategizing.
Contrary to what the normative literature has addressed so far regarding how data allows for more effective and efficient strategizing, this research reveals how this tendency is also ‘pushed back’ in various ways in practice to prevent losing ground. While current strategy literature often views this as sources of inertia and resistance that must be overcome, this thesis shows practitioners should regard such forces as valuable reluctance and, conversely, essential for strategic value creation by ensuring a broader strategic focus, including on important nonquantifiable aspects not reflected by the data.t
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen