Drivers of Big Data Analytics’ Adoption and Implications of Management Decision-Making on Big Data Adoption and Firms’ Financial and Non-Financial Performance: Evidence from Nigeria’s Manufacturing and Service Industries

Abstract

Despite advances in big data analytics (BDA), its traditional adoption utility discourse is yet to move beyond early capture to focus on its postadoption impacts on firms’ financial performance (FP) and nonfinancial performance (NFP), especially in developing economies like Nigeria's. This study advances the BDA field, whose existing utilitarian discourse on organizational readiness for change does not generally reflect the empirical and analytical reality of 261 Nigerian professionals. By drawing on business-to-business marketing, dynamic capabilities, and technology-organization-environment theoretical frameworks, we first contribute a conceptual model (see Fig. 1) to develop nine testable hypotheses to initially highlight which factors really impact on organizations' readiness to adopt BDA, second, to show the real impacts of management's post-BDA-adoption, which existing scholarship on BDA discourse had missed. Consequently, our study's findings were used to develop Fig. 2, showing the direct and moderating nature of interactions between BDA and TOE variables, from which hypotheses one and two demonstrate support for the technological and value creation of BDA adoption. However, whereas hypotheses three and four confirm top management's support and overall organizational readiness for BDA adoption in line with existing literature, paradoxically, this study's hypotheses five and seven contribute to the existing BDA discourse by highlighting that environmental, competitive pressure (CP), including regulation does not support the adoption of BDA. Additionally, while external support (H6) was found conducive for BDA adoption in line with current literature. Interestingly, hypotheses eight, nine, and 10a were also found supportive of not only FP but also NFP. However, contrary to current theorization, hypothesis 10b was not found supportive of NFP. Therefore, contrary to previous TOE scholarship, our results contribute to the BDA discourse additionally showing how CP and regulatory environment are not significantly supportive of BDA adoption; second, by highlighting how TOE's critical regulation and competition factors for BDA adoption are additionally nonimpactful on management's decision to adopt BDA. Finally, additional moderating factors particularly on external competition and government regulatory compliance are critical in ascertaining not only organizations’ FP but also their NFP readiness in the Nigerian context. The implications and limitations are discussed.