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Big Data and Information Processing in Organizational Decision Processes

A Multiple Case Study

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Abstract

Data-centric approaches such as big data and related approaches from business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) have recently attracted major attention due to their promises of huge improvements in organizational performance based on new business insights and improved decision making. Incorporating data-centric approaches into organizational decision processes is challenging, even more so with big data, and it is not self-evident that the expected benefits will be realized. Previous studies have identified the lack of a research focus on the context of decision processes in data-centric approaches. By using a multiple case study approach, the paper investigates different types of BI&A-supported decision processes, and makes three major contributions. First, it shows how different facets of big data and information processing mechanism compositions are utilized in different types of BI&A-supported decision processes. Second, the paper contributes to information processing theory by providing new insights about organizational information processing mechanisms and their complementary relationship to data-centric mechanisms. Third, it demonstrates how information processing theory can be applied to assess the dynamics of mechanism composition across different types of decisions. Finally, the study’s implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the House of IT e. V. for supporting this research with a grant to the first author. The authors thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the paper. The authors are deeply grateful to all participants of the case study – without their openness and the commitment of their precious time this research would not have been possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fachgebiet Wirtschaftsinformatik Software Business & Information Management, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 1, 64289, Darmstadt, Germany

    Martin Kowalczyk &  Peter Buxmann

Authors
  1. Martin Kowalczyk
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  2. Peter Buxmann
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Correspondence to Martin Kowalczyk.

Additional information

Accepted after two revisions by the editors of the special focus.

This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Kowalczyk M, Buxmann P (2014) Big Data und Informationsverarbeitung in organisatorischen Entscheidungsprozessen. Eine multiple Fallstudie. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/s11576-014-0430-6.

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Kowalczyk, M., Buxmann, P. Big Data and Information Processing in Organizational Decision Processes. Bus Inf Syst Eng 6, 267–278 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-014-0341-5

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