Why Users Do Not Accept Big Data: Benefits and Challenges of Big Data Implementation

Abstract

The following research is an explorative multiple case study seeking to understand the benefits and challenges of big data introduced as a data-driven business process in three types of organizations. This perception of the technology reveals how BD’s characteristics, the organizational culture and the organizational strategy function as antecedents of adoption, impacting on the effects of this technology for the organization. This reveals that user acceptance begins in the initiation phase of adoption of this technology and not just after implementation as the literature has previously suggested. To this end, this study uses seven cases from different settings to uncover the respondents’ experience with this new technology. The cases come from manufacture and service companies as well as the public administration, where changes, challenges and potential benefits of BD are described for the different organization types. Additionally, the technology’s and the organizational characteristics are used to explain user acceptance decision for BD in the organization.