Exploring Big Data's Strategic Consequences

Abstract

Big data multiplies the potential of organizational data engagement and the shaping of enterprise strategy processes. The paper argues that big data qualitatively alters strategic processes by extending managerial possibilities for acting on both structured and unstructured information because the conceptually presumed linear links between corporate strategy, firm structure and information systems design no longer hold. Big data draws organizational information systems into a shifting dynamic of altered forms of information access and use as part of a wider complex loop of interventions and analyses. Big data analyses are for many firms becoming indispensable strategic ploys which themselves alter strategies that further mobilize big data consequences. The paper also argues that the use of big data for directing enterprise activities effects behavioural and political organizational consequences. The paper concludes