Understanding How the Ad Hoc use of Big Data Analytics Impacts Agility: A Sensemaking-Based Model

As business environments become increasingly complex and turbulent, organizations are required to be more agile. Use of big data analytics (BDA) can be a differentiator for organizations seeking to improve agility to quickly sense and respond to novel and complex events. Usage of BDA comprises two types: the routine use and the ad hoc use. The latter is more associated with the unplanned analysis of big data to understand unexpected events, and its effects have not been studied in distinction to the former in the analytics literature. We draw on sensemaking, the organizational theory of the process of understanding novel and complex events, to investigate how the ad hoc use of BDA improves agility of organizations. Analysis of a survey of 107 business executives and senior managers demonstrated the positive effects of the ad hoc use of BDA on agility, through mediation by sensemaking.