Exploring the Relationship between Big Data Analytics Capability and Organization’s Strategic Intent: Mediating Role of Environmental Scanning

Abstract

Big data analytics has attracted significant scholarly attention over the past few years due to its critical role in directing organizational decision making. Big data analytics capabilities (BDAC) are increasingly being suggested to be of great help in providing competitive advantages to the firms across industrial settings. Although, prior research has examined the influence of BDAC from a technological perspective; there is a lack of a research from a broader strategic perspective. Correspondingly, this study builds on dynamic capabilities view to propose a conceptual model that investigates the direct and indirect effects between three dimensions of BDAC on environmental scanning and organization’s strategic intent. This study adopted the questionnaire-based survey method to collect the data from 179 senior managers of pharmaceutical companies in Egypt. The results revealed that only the technological dimension of BDAC significantly affected the strategic intent only through supporting data-driven culture and organizational learning. The results also reveal that BDAC is positively associated with environmental scanning, which consequently affects strategic intent. Our results further reveal that environmental scanning mediates the relationship between BDAC and organization’s strategic intent. The paper concludes by offering some valuable theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords:

• Big data analytics capability
• Egypt
• environmental scanning
• strategic intent