Big Data and Organizational Learning: Conceptualizing the Link

Abstract

Organizational learning is key for organizations in creating and enhancing business processes as well as improving decision making to gain competitive advantage. Big data is becoming a source of competitive advantage, productivity growth, agility and innovation for organizations. Harnessing knowledge from big data has the potential to create individual and collective learning within organizations. Conceptualizing the link between big data and organizational learning is thus worth investigating if big data is to contribute to organizational learning. To understand the big data and organizational learning link, the characteristics of big data, the tools associated with big data and how organizations learn needs to be understood. Big data assist organizational learning by using its tools to aid the knowledge conversion process. The characteristics of big data are exhibited through the use of big data tools in the management of knowledge involved in organizational learning.