Antecedents and performance outcomes of employees’ data analytics skills: an adaptation structuration theory-based empirical investigation

ABSTRACT

How do organizations develop and manage employees’ data analytics skills to create business value and enhance organizational competitive advantage? In order to address this prominent and critical research question for IS research, we conceptualize and operationalize data analytics skills at the individual level and develop a nomological network model to examine its critical antecedents and outcomes from the lens of adaptation structuration theory. We test our core proposition and research model using survey data collected from 258 frontline employees of three data-intensive research institutes in China. We discover that data-driven culture, data analytics affordance, and individual absorptive capacity are positively associated with employees’ data analytics skills, which in turn, have positive influences on their task and innovative performance. We classify the employees into digital immigrants and digital natives based on age and examine the different influences of three salient antecedents on data analytics skills between the two groups. The research findings suggest that data-driven culture plays a more significant role in driving data analytics skills for digital immigrants, while data analytics affordance exhibits a stronger influence on data analytics skills for digital natives.

KEYWORDS:

• Data analytics skills
• task performance
• innovative performance
• adaptation structuration theory
• digital natives
• digital immigrants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhen Shao

Zhen Shao is an Associate Professor of IS at the School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. She worked as a Visiting Scholar in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, USA. Her research primarily focuses on enterprise information systems assimilation, digital innovation, sharing economy, and digital trust. Her work has been published in academic journals including the European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Information & Management, Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Electronic Commerce and Research Application, Internet Research, Behaviour & Information Technology, Computers in Human Behavior, and Industrial Management & Data Systems, and presented at conferences including the INFORMS Annual Conference, International Conference on Information Systems, Americas Conference on Information Systems, the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, and the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems. Zhen can be contacted at [email protected].

Jose Benitez

Jose Benitez is a Full Professor of Management Information Systems at EDHEC Business School, Lille, and Paris, France. Previously, Jose held senior faculty member and academic managerial and leadership positions (i.e., Associate Dean, Department Chair, and Endowed Chair) at Rennes School of Business (Rennes and Paris, France) and the University of Granada (Granada, Spain). His research interests cover the study of how firms select digital technologies and develop unique digital capabilities to execute digitally-driven business transformation initiatives to improve firm performance, the bright and dark IT impact on individuals, and the development of quantitative research methods in the field of IS. His research has been published in top journals in IS and other Business Administration disciplines such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Information & Management, Decision Support Systems, Decision Sciences, and Journal of Business Research. Jose's engagement with the IS discipline has been recognized, designating him as an Association for Information Systems Distinguished Member Cum Laude. He currently serves as Senior Editor of the European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, and Decision Support Systems and as Associate Editor for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. In addition, Jose has served as Guest Editor of Decision Sciences. Jose got a Ph.D. in Business Administration (with a concentration in IS) from the University of Granada, Spain, with a double exchange with the University of Minnesota, USA, and Maastricht University, The Netherlands. His teaching interests and instructional expertise cover managing digital business transformation, digital innovation, the business value of digital technologies, IT management, IT strategy, IT and sustainable development, and quantitative research methods at Ph.D., Executive MBA, Global MBA, MIM, and BBA. Jose is a passionate speaker that enjoys working with students, colleagues, and executives. He has provided consulting services and worked on IT development and digital transformation projects with many leading companies in Spain, France, and the USA. Jose can be contacted at [email protected].

Jing Zhang

Jing Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate of IS at the School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Her research focuses on digital innovation and artificial intelligence. She has presented her IS research at the International Conference on Information Systems and the China Summer Workshop on Information Management. Jing can be contacted at [email protected].

Hanqing Zheng

Hanqing Zheng is an Engineer at the Shanghai Aerospace Control Technology Research Institute, Shanghai, China. Hanqing can be contacted at [email protected].

Aseel Ajamieh

Aseel Ajamieh is an Assistant Professor of IS at King Talal School of Business Technology, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman, Jordan. Aseel got a Ph.D. in Business Administration (with a concentration in IS) from the University of Granada, Granada, Spain. Her research interests cover how firms invest and develop IT capabilities to create business value. Her research has been published in Information & Management, and the Journal of Business Research.