Annals of Operations Research

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-020-03812-4

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Big data analytics-enabled sensing capability

and organizational outcomes: assessing the mediating
effects of business analytics culture

Samuel Fosso Wamba1 · Maciel M. Queiroz2 · Lunwen Wu3 ·

Uthayasankar Sivarajah4

Accepted: 24 September 2020

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
With the emergence of information and communication technologies, organizations world-
wide have been putting in meaningful efforts towards developing and gaining business
insights by combining technology capability, management capability and personnel capa-
bility to explore data potential, which is known as big data analytics (BDA) capability. In this
context, variables such as sensing capability—which is related to the organization’s ability
to explore the market and develop opportunities—and analytics culture—which refers to the
organization’s practices and behavior patterns of its analytical principles—play a fundamen-
tal role in BDA initiatives. However, there is a considerable literature gap concerning the
effects of BDA-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture on organizational outcomes
(i.e., customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic
business value) and on how important the organization’s analytics culture is as a mediator
in the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capability and organizational outcomes.
Therefore, this study aims to investigate these relationships. And to attain this goal, we devel-
oped a conceptual model supported by dynamics capabilities, BDA, and analytics culture.
We then validated our model by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling.
The findings showed not only the positive effect of the BDA-enabled sensing capability and
analytics culture on organizational outcomes but also the mediation effect of the analytics
culture. Such results bring valuable theoretical implications and contributions to managers
and practitioners.

Keywords Data analytics · Dynamic capabilities · Data-driven culture · Organizational

outcomes · Sensing capabilities

1 Introduction

The recent emergence and expansion of business analytics (Akter et al. 2020; Krishnamoorthi
and Mathew 2018; Mishra et al. 2018; Mikalef et al. 2018; Liu and Yi 2018) and cutting-
edge technologies based on data science (Waller and Fawcett 2013) has allowed organizations
around the world to experiment new possibilities of transforming their business models (Guha

Extended author information available on the last page of the article

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and Kumar 2018; Aboelmaged and Mouakket 2020; Queiroz et al. 2020; Akter et al. 2020;
Fosso Wamba et al. 2018; Boone et al. 2018; See-To and Ngai 2018). One of the most popular
and influential approaches of business analytics is concerned with big data analytics (BDA)
(Dubey et al. 2019b; Akter et al. 2019; Gandomi and Haider 2015; Fosso Wamba et al. 2017b;
Mikalef et al. 2018).
While big data is a term used to characterize a considerable volume of structured, semi-
structured, and unstructured data while considering its 5 V s (i.e., volume, velocity, variety,
veracity, and value) (Fosso Wamba et al. 2017a; Queiroz and Telles 2018), BDA refers to
“an integrated data collection and analysis process to provide solid insights for managerial
decision-making” (Akter et al. 2017, p. 1013), through sophisticated statistical, computa-
tional and visualization tools. As for big data analytics capability, it refers to “a firm’s
ability to assemble, integrate, and deploy its big data-specific resources” (Gupta and George
2016, p. 1049). Bloomberg (2020) has forecast the current and future boom and frenzy for
BDA/business analytics, whose market is expected to reach a value of USD 512.04 billion
by 2026.
BDA techniques are to play a leading role in this outstanding progress (Gupta et al. 2019;
Prasad et al. 2018, 2020; Aloysius et al. 2018), as they represent a powerful approach for
capturing, storing, managing, and analyzing huge volumes of data that traditional approaches
can not perform (Manyika et al. 2011; Mikalef et al. 2019). Besides, analyses of and insights
into descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive forms of knowledge are expected to be more
robust and convincing with such techniques to support better the management’s decisions
within organizations (Phillips-Wren and Hoskisson 2015; Wang et al. 2016).
In this context, BDA/business analytics is capable of generating singular insights related to
various patterns of business, operations, and market monitoring while enabling outstanding
predictions for improved firm performance (Mikalef et al. 2019; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a;
Hazen et al. 2018). The relevant extant literature has made significant advances by reporting
BDA capabilities in multiple contexts, including e-commerce, disaster management, human-
itarian supply chain, firm performance, sustainable consumption, healthcare, and product
development (Akter and Fosso Wamba 2016, 2019; Akter et al. 2016; Dubey et al. 2018;
Wang et al. 2018; Zhan et al. 2018).
Against this backdrop, organizations will reap the benefits of BDA only if they invest
sufficiently in these tools. In this sense, data-driven culture plays an essential role in BDA
project success (Upadhyay and Kumar 2020; Duan et al. 2020; Hassna and Lowry 2018),
and, consequently, on organizational outcomes. In this work, BDA-enabled sensing capa-
bility shall be related to big data analytics capabilities to explore environmental data and
information, with a view to gaining supportive insights for decision-making in a wide range
of subjects (product/service development, operations and financial performance, competitive
advantage, etc.). In this vein, BDA-enabled sensing capability seems to be a contributive
factor for improving performance (Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a) and establishing a culture of
analytics within organizations.
The analytics culture has been so far better defined as “the organizational norms, values,
behavioral patterns resulting in systematic ways of creating, gathering, consolidating, and
analyzing the data and making them available for the right audience” (Krishnamoorthi and
Mathew 2018, p. 653). The analytics culture can leverage the organization’s data-driven
culture, which definitely impacts the routine work of the organization’s members, especially
when supporting the decision-making process and practices by exploring the insights from
data analysis (Gupta and George 2016; Mikalef et al. 2020a).
Most organizations need to put in considerable efforts to acquire, generate, and analyze
insights by exploring data from multiple sources. Therefore, the engagement and participation

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of both top-level decision-makers and staff members are essential to build a genuine analytics
culture (Gupta and George 2016). Ultimately, customer linking capability is also critical in
this regard. It refers to the organization’s ability to create and establish a relationship with
the customers (Day 1994; Rapp et al. 2010).
Despite the considerable advances of the BDA literature (Gupta and George 2016; Akter
et al. 2019; Mikalef et al. 2019; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a) and IT-enabled capabilities
(Mikalef et al. 2020c), there is a substantial gap concerning the analysis of the influence of
BDA-enabled sensing capability and the analytics culture on organizational outcomes. This
added to the scarcity of works dealing simultaneously with the dynamics of BDA-enabled
sensing capability and the influence of the analytics culture.
To bridge this gap, this study aims to explore the influence of BDA-enabled sensing capa-
bility and analytics culture on organizational outcomes (i.e., customer linking capability,
financial performance, market performance, and strategic business value). Besides, while the
recent literature approached the mediating effect of the organizational culture in the rela-
tionship between knowledge and BDAC, as well as the mediating effects of BDAC in the
relationship between organizational culture and firm performance (Upadhyay and Kumar
2020), our work will mainly focus on investigating the impact of the organization’s ana-
lytics culture as a mediator in the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capability
and organization outcomes (i.e., customer linking capability, financial performance, market
performance, and strategic business value). Therefore, we look forward to providing useful
insights and, if possible, answering the following research questions (R.Q.):
RQ1: Does big data analytics-enabled sensing capability improve organizational out-
comes?
RQ2: To which extent does the analytics culture influence the improvement of organiza-
tional outcomes?
RQ3: Can the analytics culture be perceived as a significant mediator between the big data
analytics-enabled sensing capability and organizational outcomes?
Drawing on the literature concerning dynamic capabilities (Teece 2007; Teece et al. 1997;
Helfat and Peteraf 2009), BDA capabilities (Akter et al. 2016; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a;
Upadhyay and Kumar 2020; Mikalef et al. 2020a) and the analytics culture (Arunachalam
et al. 2018; Lin and Kunnathur 2019; Krishnamoorthi and Mathew 2018), we developed a
conceptual model that was validated by means of SmartPLS (Ringle et al. 2015; Hair et al.
2017). In terms of contributions, this work enriches the relevant literature by proposing and
validating an original model for exploring the influence of both the BDA-enabled dynamic
capability and the business analytics culture on organizational outcomes, as well as the role
of the analytics culture as a mediator.
This paper is organized into sections. Section 2 provides a literature review and a theoretical
framework supported by dynamic capabilities, BDA-enabled dynamic capability, and the
analytics culture. Section 3 presents the methodology adopted, followed by data analysis, and
results in Sect. 4. In Sect. 5, we provide a discussion showing the managerial and theoretical
contributions of the study, its limitations, and some directions for future research. Section 6
presents the main conclusions of this work.

2 Literature review and theoretical framework

A conceptual model was developed based on the context of dynamic capabilities (Teece 2007;
Teece et al. 1997; Mikalef et al. 2020c), more specifically on sensing capability, BDA capa-

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bilities (Akter et al. 2016; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a; Upadhyay and Kumar 2020; Mikalef
et al. 2020a) and the analytics culture (Arunachalam et al. 2018; Lin and Kunnathur 2019;
Krishnamoorthi and Mathew 2018), to investigate the organizational outcomes (customer
linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic business value)
generated by big data-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture.

2.1 Dynamic capabilities

The resource-based theory of competitive strategy posits that firm-specific capabilities and
assets and associated isolating mechanisms are the fundamental determinants of firm per-
formance (Rumelt 1984, Wernerfelt 1984). A firm’s resources include all physical, human,
and organizational capital resources that allow it to conceive and implement strategies to
improve efficiency and effectiveness (Barney 1991). Examples include brand names, tech-
nical knowledge, skilled personnel, trade contacts, machinery, and efficient procedures and
processes. An organization’s ability to successfully manage its critical resources determines
its capacity to create a competitive advantage and improve firm performance (Grant 1991;
Newbert 2007).
In this context, the dynamic capabilities theory has gained visibility for more than two
decades (Teece et al. 1997; Teece and Pisano 1994), especially with the speedup of globaliza-
tion and the emergence of the cutting-edge technologies in the nineties and the years 2000.
According to Teece et al. (1997), the dynamic capabilities refer to the ability of organizations
in terms of internal and external competencies that can enhance its development, integration,
and reconfiguration, in the face of different changes within a specific environment.
Besides, the theory about dynamic capabilities is viewed as an extension of the widespread
resource-based view (RBV) theory (Barney 1991). Nowadays, the unprecedented changes
imposed by the environment are challenging organizations, thereby pushing them to make
use of their internal and external competences to cope with different challenges. For instance,
the rapid and exponential growth of cutting-edge technologies like big data analytics ( Fosso
Wamba et al. 2017a) has led to adaptative measures taken by organizations around the globe.
According to Teece (2007, p. 1319), “dynamic capabilities can be disaggregated into the
capacity (1) to sense and shape opportunities and threats, (2) to seize opportunities, and (3)
to maintain competitiveness through enhancing, combining, protecting, and, when necessary,
reconfiguring the business enterprise’s intangible and tangible assets.“
One of the most critical dynamic capabilities is the market sense, or merely sensing
capabilities (Alshanty and Emeagwali 2019; Bayighomog Likoum et al. 2020). According
to Day (1994), sensing capability refers to the ability of a firm to learn with its market
environment and take the actions supported by this acquired knowledge.
Recent studies have highlighted the prominence of sensing capability (Alinaghian et al.
2020; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a). They include a study by Hassna and Lowry (2018),
who explored the big data capability, customer agility, and organization’s performance from
the dynamic capability standpoint. Through a case study concerning Alibaba, the authors
suggested that customer sensing capability is improved by big data capability. Moreover,
recently, the literature established interesting propositions related to the positive influence of
sensing capability on firm performance (Bayighomog Likoum et al. 2020) and on knowledge
creation (Alshanty and Emeagwali 2019).

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2.2 Organizational outcomes enhancement through BDA-enabled sensing

capability

BDA is considered as a game-changer and an enabler of competitive advantage, given its

ability to enhance business processes at both operational and strategic levels Fosso Wamba
et al. 2017a). BDA-enabled sensing capability can use a variety of techniques and tools to
sense and predict organizational outcomes. For instance, BDA-enabled sensing capability
can enhance organizational performance and agility (Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a). Previous
studies have pointed out different levels of organizational outcomes enhancement from the
BDA-enabled capability perspective (Akter et al. 2016; Fosso Wamba et al. 2017a; Mikalef
et al. 2020a). Thus, BDA techniques are a robust and suitable approach for gaining a deeper
understanding of an organization’s customers and establishing strategic relationships. This
implies that customer sensing capability could be enhanced by big data capability (Hassna
and Lowry 2018), and thus positively impact the firm’s operations and performance.
It should be noted that the customer linking capability is related to the expertise and capa-
bilities of organizations to develop and maintain a relationship with the customers (Day 1994;
Rapp et al. 2010). This means that the customer linking capability is considered a powerful
and valuable resource for any organization (Rapp et al. 2010). Concerning the importance
of creating and developing customer linking capability to explore and gain insights from
the market, scholars have reported the influence on the organization’s performance. For
instance, Rapp et al. (2010), in a study investigating customer orientation, CRM technology,
and the effects of customer linking capability, found that customer linking capability pos-
itively affects customer relationship performance. In other words, BDA sensing capability
can enable an organization to build and foster relationships (including in-depth ones) with
customers, while supporting opportunities for collaborative product/services development.
Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on customer link-
ing capability.
The BDA capabilities also could bring and leverage considerable gains for a firm’s compet-
itive performance (Dubey et al. 2019b; Mikalef et al. 2020a). For instance, BDA capabilities
could help firms to consolidate the monitoring of their financial environment (Mikalef et al.
2020a) and, therefore, their market performance (Upadhyay and Kumar 2020). Hence, we
hypothesize that:
H2: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on financial per-
formance.
H3: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on market perfor-
mance.
The influence of business analytics capability on business performance has been steadily
raised by the literature (Krishnamoorthi and Mathew 2018; Nam et al. 2019). It has been
proven, among other things, that BDA capabilities can create strategic business value (Akter
et al. 2020) by contributing to the monitoring of the environment and of the various market
trends (Mikalef et al. 2020a), all of which is possible when valuable insights are brought to
the firm’s strategies. Therefore, we hypothesize the following:
H4: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on strategic busi-
ness value.
Analytics culture is a broad concept that refers to an organizational behavior associated
with value and norms for all data activities (i.e., gathering, storage, techniques to analysis)

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aimed at informing business decision-making driven by data (Krishnamoorthi and Mathew

2018). Besides, data-driven culture is considered a critical feature of BDA initiatives (Mikalef
et al. 2020a; Gupta and George 2016). Hence, we hypothesize the following:
H5: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on analytics cul-
ture.

2.3 Assimilating analytics through business analytics culture

Analytics culture, which is mainly represented by a data-driven culture in an organization,

is considered one of the most influential resources that support the other firm’s capabilities
(Arunachalam et al. 2018). In this regard, organizations should pay attention to the cul-
tural aspects of development values for the purpose of recognizing and addressing customer
demands promptly and effectively (Lin and Kunnathur 2019). Thus, we hypothesize that:
H6: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on customer linking capability.
Many organizations are investing in analytics solutions to enhance their financial and
market performance, but also their business value (Raguseo and Vitari 2018). Improved
business value outcomes require meaningful analytics culture (Duan et al. 2020; Arunachalam
et al. 2018), which accounts for a competitive advantage to be enhanced (Upadhyay and
Kumar 2020; Mikalef et al. 2020a). Therefore, we derive the following hypotheses:
H7: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on financial performance.
H8: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on market performance.
H9: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on strategic business value.

2.3.1 Mediating effect of the analytics culture

An analytics culture, which is epitomized by the organization’s beliefs, practices, norms, and
values, is fundamental for supporting BDA project efforts and enabling the firm to reach the
desired level of performance (Hallikainen et al. 2020; Krishnamoorthi and Mathew 2018).
Regarding the customer linking capability, it highlights that organizations’ operations should
take into account the relationship between the firms and their customers, in a coordinated
business model, so as to better understand the customer needs (Rapp et al. 2010). Gaining
insights from the relationship with the customer implies that the organization concerned has
established a culture that reinforces the importance of BDA sensing capabilities.
Recently, Upadhyay and Kumar (2020) found that organizational culture exerts a sig-
nificant positive effect on the relationship between big data analytics capability and firm
performance. Also, these authors reported a mediation effect not only in the relationship
between knowledge and BDAC (caused by organizational culture), but also in the relation-
ship between organizational culture and firm performance (this time, by BDAC).
From that perspective, it is suggested that analytics culture can exert influence on both
BDA capabilities and financial and market performance (Hallikainen et al. 2020; Duan et al.
2020). Once again, the analytics culture is essential for firms with BDA capabilities to achieve
their desired business value (Lin and Kunnathur 2019). Therefore, we hypothesize that:
H10: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and customer linking capability.
H11: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and financial performance.

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Fig. 1 Research model

H12: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and market performance.
H13: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and strategic business value.
Figure 1 describes the conceptual model of this work. Here, BDA-enabled dynamic capa-
bility and business analytics culture are supposed to contribute to attaining organizational
outcomes considerably. Also, as presented previously, the analytics culture (Upadhyay and
Kumar 2020; Duan et al. 2020; Arunachalam et al. 2018) is expected to play a fundamental
role in the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capability and organizational out-
comes.

3 Research methodology

This study is part of a large research project aiming at assessing the critical determinants of
BDA adoption, use, and impacts. A web-based questionnaire method was used as it enabled
us not only to capture the causal relationships between the different constructs but also to
generalize (and thus replicate) the findings obtained (Pinsonneault and Kraemer 1993).
In this vein, all constructs included in the questionnaires were derived from prior studies
and adapted to fit the BDA context. Big data-enabled sensing capability was adapted from
Morgan, Slotegraaf et al. (2009), while analytics culture was adapted from Kiron et al.
(2014). Rapp et al. (2010) was used to adapt customer linking capability, and the adaptation
of financial performance relied on Tippins and Sohi (2003). Market performance was adapted
from Wang, Liang et al. (2012), and the strategic business value was adapted from Gregor
et al. (2006). Items were measured using a seven-point Likert scale with anchors ranging
from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).
This study uses a cross-sectional design to collect data. A leading U.S. market research
firm conducted the data collection in July 2016 among mid-level executive analytics profes-
sionals with prior experience of business analytics projects. Before this final data collection,
a pre-testing of the questionnaire was realized using 20 random samples, thus allowing us

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to check for the content validity of the survey. For the final data collection, an invitation
explaining the objectives of the study was sent to a selected sample of 538 mid-level exec-
utive analytics professionals who had agreed to participate in the study. At the end of the
data collection period, a careful analysis of all responses was realized, and 202 valid ques-
tionnaires were eventually considered to have been appropriately filled out and suitable for
further investigation; this corresponded to a response rate of 37.55%.
Regarding the demographic profile, male and female participation was somewhat similar,
with 52% and 48%, respectively. The age of the majority of respondents ranged from 50 and
more (39.1%), while 23.3% were between 34 and 41 years old. Concerning the educational
attainment, the majority of the respondents were holders of a tertiary level degree (82.1%),
and most of them had already spent between 2 and 10 years in their employer organization
(55.4%). About the industry of participants, the predominant size was 2500+ (employees),
accounting for 32.2% of the respondents, while the different types of a sector included
accommodation and food service activities; electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply;
financial and insurance activities; wholesale and retail trade; and real estate activities, among
others.

4 Data analysis and results

For data analysis, we used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM)
(Akter et al. 2017; Moqbel and Kock 2018; Mikalef et al. 2020c). PLS is a robust approach
(Kock 2019) for the simple reason that it does not necessarily require normal distribution
and is suitable for small sample sizes (Hair et al. 2014). During the model analysis process,
we followed the best practices and recommendations about the partial least squares approach
(Peng and Lai 2012; Kock and Hadaya 2018; Hair et al. 2017). For instance, we used Smart-
PLS 3.0 (Ringle et al. 2015) to estimate the structural model and its path relationships. The
evaluation of the measurement model and the structural model are described below.

4.1 Measurement model

This consisted of primarily testing the Cronbach’s alpha and Composite reliability in order to
measure the internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire (Hair et al. 2017). It should
be noted that the Cronbach’s alpha and Composite reliability results were greater than 0.70,
thus outperforming the literature cutoff (Hair et al. 2017; Nunnally 1978; Fosso Wamba et al.
2020b) and suggesting adequate reliability of the selected constructs.
In addition, the loadings of the items were also greater than the 0.70 cutoffs, thereby
supporting the indicator’s reliability (Hair et al. 2017). The average variance extracted (AVE)
was then used to measure convergent validity. All AVE values appeared greater than the
literature’s 0.50 cutoff (Fornell and Larcker 1981; Malesios et al. 2018; Hair et al. 2017;
Fosso Wamba et al. 2020b), suggesting an adequate convergent validity (Fornell and Larcker
1981).
Table 1 shows the loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, Composite reliability, and AVE results.
Finally, we measured the discriminant validity (Table 2). We also used the AVE to measure the
latent variables intercorrelations, in which the square root of all constructs was greater than the
correlations between a primary construct and all other constructs (Fornell and Larcker 1981).
Therefore, the discriminant validity of the constructs was assessed by means of diagonal

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values, all of which needed to be greater than others. In our case, the discriminant validity
of the constructs was eventually testified (Fornell and Larcker 1981).

4.2 Structural model assessment

Table 3 points out the predictive power of the model. We performed Stone-Geisser’s Q2
test (Manupati et al. 2019; Hair et al. 2017; Stone 1974) to assess the predictive relevance
of the model. The SmartPLS uses the blindfolding technique founded by cross-validated
redundancy to estimate the model and its parameters. A Q2 higher than 0 is sufficient to show
the predictive power of the model. In addition, the study by Hair et al. (2019) highlights that
Q2 values that are higher than 0.25 depict a medium predictive power, while those higher
than 0.50 indicate a robust predictive power of the PLS model.
On the other hand, the coefficient of determination (R2 ) emphasizes the protective accuracy
of the model (Hair et al. 2017). It should be noted that the structural model explained the
variance in analytics culture by 45.9%, in the customer linking capability by 58.2%, in the
financial performance by 48.7%, in the market performance by 45.5%, and in the strategic
business value by 45.3%. Therefore, this suggests the good explanatory power of the structural
model (Hair et al. 2017).

4.2.1 Assessment of hypotheses

We relied on the SmartPLS 3.0 (Ringle et al. 2015) to assess the hypotheses of the model.
In H1-H5, we hypothesize the positive influence of the BDA-enabled sensing capability on
customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, strategic business
value, and analytics culture, respectively. The path results obtained (β  0.347, p  0.002),
(β  0.462, p  0.000), (β  0.412, p  0.000), (β  0.214, p  0.016), (β  0.677, p
 0.000) supported the positive effect of the BDA-enabled sensing capability on all these
variables. In this regard, it should be noted the strong positive effect (H5) that BDA-enabled
sensing capability causes on analytics culture.
With regard to hypotheses H6-H9, we assessed the likelihood of the positive influence of
the analytics culture on customer linking capability, financial performance, market perfor-
mance, and strategic business value, respectively. Again, the path results (β  0.484, p 
0.000), (β  0.297, p  0.001), (β  0.324, p  0.000), and (β  0.510, p  0.000) supports
all the above-mentioned hypotheses. The focus should be made on the strong positive effect
of the organization’s analytics culture on strategic business value. These findings reinforce
the conclusions of previous studies that highlighted the critical influence of the analytics
culture on the achievement of an organization’s business strategic value (Lin and Kunnathur
2019; Mikalef et al. 2020a). Table 4 draws attention on the direct effects of the model, while
Table 5 shows its indirect effects.
Concerning the indirect relationships of the structural model, the results (β  0.358, p
 0.000), (β  0.195, p  0.027), (β  0.224, p  0.012), and (β  0.402, p  0.000)
showed a significant positive effect of the analytics culture as mediator in the relationship
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and customer linking capability (H10), financial
performance (H11), market performance (H12), and strategic business value (H13), respec-
tively.
These results confirm that the organizations should pay attention to how important is the
data-driven culture (Duan et al. 2020) for enhancing business performance and generating
strategic business value. Moreover, the mediating outcome obtained is in line with a previous

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Table 1 Measures of the internal Variable Items Loadings Cronbach’s Composite AVE
consistency reliability and of the alpha reliability
convergent validity
Big data- BSEN1 0.902 0.911 0.944 0.849
enabled BSEN2 0.941
sensing
capabil- BSEN3 0.921
ity
Analytics ACUL1 0.816 0.944 0.951 0.566
culture ACUL2 0.785
ACUL3 0.805
ACUL4 0.746
ACUL5 0.825
ACUL6 0.761
ACUL7 0.775
ACUL8 0.658
ACUL9 0.711
ACUL10 0.823
ACUL11 0.705
ACUL12 0.790
ACUL13 0.635
ACUL14 0.710
ACUL15 0.701
Customer CLINK1 0.904 0.941 0.958 0.851
linking CLINK2 0.946
capabil-
ity CLINK3 0.938
CLINK4 0.900
Financial FPERF1 0.850 0.921 0.944 0.809
perfor- FPERF2 0.922
mance
FPERF3 0.915
FPERF4 0.909
Market MPERF1 0.866 0.915 0.940 0.797
perfor- MPERF2 0.883
mance
MPERF3 0.888
MPERF4 0.933
Strategic SVAL1 0.792 0.898 0.922 0.664
business SVAL2 0.816
value
SVAL3 0.734
SVAL4 0.828
SVAL5 0.836
SVAL6 0.876

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Table 2 Intercorrelations between ACUL CLINK FPERF MPERF BSEN SVAL

the latent variables
ACUL 0.752
CLINK 0.719 0.922
FPERF 0.610 0.621 0.900
MPERF 0.603 0.606 0.712 0.893
BSEN 0.677 0.675 0.663 0.631 0.921
Bold represent the square roots of SVAL 0.655 0.572 0.484 0.498 0.559 0.815
AVE on the diagonal

Table 3 Results of R2 and Q2 Endogenous latent variable R2 Q2

values
Analytics culture 0.459 0.254
Customer linking capability 0.582 0.486
Financial performance 0.487 0.384
Market performance 0.455 0.356
Strategic business value 0.453 0.292

study by Upadhyay and Kumar (2020), which found a positive effect of the organizational
culture on the relationship between big data analytics capability and firm performance. Table 6
highlights the results of the hypotheses, all of which were supported (with direct and indirect
effects).

5 Discussion

The objective of this work was to provide a better understanding of how big data analytics-
enabled sensing capability influences organizational outcomes and, in particular, demonstrate
the mediating role of analytics culture. The findings indicate that our research model is
fully supported. In other words, BDA-enabled sensing capabilities do have both a direct and
indirect effect on organizational outcomes in relation to customer linking capability, financial
performance, market performance, and strategic business value.
In this context, it should be noted that all the hypotheses were supported. That is, BDA-
enabled sensing capabilities showed a significant positive influence on customer linking
capability, financial performance, market performance, strategic business value, and analytics
culture. These findings bring important contributions and implications to the BDA literature,
mainly concerning the BDAC approach (Mikalef et al. 2018). Some studies (Akter et al.
2016; Dubey et al. 2019a, c; Fosso Wamba et al. 2017a; Gupta and George 2016; Mikalef
et al. 2019, 2020a; Fosso Wamba et al. 2020a) have already skimmed over the impact of
BDAC on organizations, but this could not contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects
of BDA-enabled sensing capabilities. In this sense, the outcomes of our study about such
relationships appear as valuable contributions to the BDA literature.
Furthermore, in line with previous studies that highlighted the prominence of the analytics
culture and data-driven culture in BDA project success stories (Upadhyay and Kumar 2020;
Duan et al. 2020; Hassna and Lowry 2018; Krishnamoorthi and Mathew 2018; Gupta and
George 2016; Mikalef et al. 2018), and helped in supporting the organizational outcomes, our

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Table 4 Results of the structural model—direct effects

Hypothesis Paths Path coefficients Standard deviation t statistic p value

H1 BDA-enabled sensing 0.347 0.109 3.178 0.002

capability →
Customer linking
capability
H2 BDA-enabled sensing 0.462 0.086 5.347 0.000
capability →
Financial
performance
H3 BDA-enabled sensing 0.412 0.093 4.439 0.000
capability →
Market
performance
H4 BDA-enabled sensing 0.214 0.088 2.428 0.016
capability →
Strategic business
value
H5 BDA-enabled sensing 0.677 0.047 14.525 0.000
capability →
Analytics culture
H6 Analytics culture → 0.484 0.096 5.063 0.000
Customer linking
capability
H7 Analytics culture → 0.297 0.091 3.246 0.001
Financial
performance
H8 Analytics culture → 0.324 0.088 3.690 0.000
Market
performance
H9 Analytics culture → 0.510 0.082 6.189 0.000
Strategic business
value

work succeeded in firmly supporting the positive influence of analytics culture on customer-
linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic business value.
Furthermore, the previous literature reported the effect of data-driven culture as an intan-
gible resource on BDAC, considering high-order models (Mikalef et al. 2020a; Gupta and
George 2016). This research work went further by revealing an interesting positive effect
of analytics culture (a similar construct) as a mediator in the relationship between BDA-
enabled sensing capability and customer linking capability/financial performance/market
performance/ strategic business value.

5.1 Theoretical contributions

Our work makes several and essential theoretical contributions to the big data analytics and
dynamic capabilities literature. We developed and validated an original conceptual model
that explored the BDA-enabled sensing capability, analytics culture, and their influence on
organizational outcomes. Our proposed model showed substantial explanatory power (Hair

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Table 5 Results of the structural model—indirect effects

Hypothesis Paths Path coefficients Standard deviation t statistic p-value

H10 BDA-enabled sensing 0.358 0.097 3.694 0.000

capability →
Analytics culture
→ Customer
linking capability
H11 BDA-enabled sensing 0.195 0.088 2.217 0.027
capability →
Analytics culture
→ Financial
performance
H12 BDA-enabled 0.224 0.089 2.514 0.012
sensing capability
→ Analytics
culture → Market
performance
H13 BDA-enabled 0.402 0.083 4.849 0.000
sensing capability
→ Analytics
culture → Strategic
business value

Table 6 Results of the hypotheses test

Hypothesis Results

H1: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on customer linking Supported
capability
H2: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on financial Supported
performance
H3: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on market Supported
performance
H4: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on strategic business Supported
value
H5: BDA-enabled sensing capability has a significant positive influence on analytics culture Supported
H6: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on customer linking capability Supported
H7: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on financial performance Supported
H8: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on market performance Supported
H9: Analytics culture has a significant positive influence on strategic business value Supported
H10: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship Supported
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and customer linking capability
H11: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship Supported
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and financial performance
H12: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship Supported
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and market performance
H13: Analytics culture, as a mediator, has a significant positive influence on the relationship Supported
between BDA-enabled sensing capability and strategic business value

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et al. 2017), accounting for 45.9%, 58.2%, 48.7%, 45.5%, and 45.3% of the variance on
analytics culture, customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance,
and strategic business value, respectively.
Moreover, we found a significant positive influence of BDA-enabled sensing capability
on organizational outcomes, especially in the relationships with financial performance (β 
0.462) and market performance (β  0.412). Furthermore, it should be highlighted the strong
effect of the BDA-enabled sensing capability on analytics culture. In this vein, it is suggested
that BDA-enabled sensing capability could reinforce an organization’s analytics culture.
On the other hand, our work found a strong relationship between analytics culture and
strategic business value (β  0.510). In this regard, while the literature has been devoted to
the relationship between analytics culture and firm performance (Bayighomog Likoum et al.
2020; Upadhyay and Kumar 2020), the results of this study demonstrated the paramount
importance of the data-driven culture for the attainment of financial performance and market
performance and the development of long-term strategies by different organizations.
Moreover, it is clear that the moderation effect of developmental culture on customer,
entrepreneurial, and technology orientation has already been investigated as shown by the
literature, but here we have been able to report the significant positive effect of analytics
culture as a mediator on the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capabilities and cus-
tomer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic business
value.
Therefore, our findings bring important implications to the literature, since the majority of
research works carried out in this field failed to discuss the effects of BDA-enabled sensing
capabilities as a predictor of different organizational outcomes (Akter et al. 2016; Dubey et al.
2019a, c; Fosso Wamba et al. 2017a; Gupta and George 2016; Mikalef et al. 2019, 2020a;
Fosso Wamba et al. 2019). Concerning the perception of data-driven culture as a predictor of
BDAC, this has been investigated by a number of authors (Mikalef et al. 2020a; Gupta and
George 2016), but we went further by unveiling an interesting behavior of analytics culture as a
predictor of essential organizational outcomes. In addition, the previous literature (Upadhyay
and Kumar 2020) reported the partial mediation effects of organizational culture on BDAC,
while in our study, we rather found that analytics culture mediates the relationships between
BDA-enabled sensing capabilities and all investigated organizational outcomes (customer
linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and strategic business value).

5.2 Managerial implications

Regarding the managerial implications of this research work, it brings interesting insights
to managers and practitioners involved in the operations field. Firstly, our findings revealed
the importance of BDA-enabled sensing capability for achieving organizational outcomes.
Specifically, our model showed that managers should consider the strong positive influence of
the BDA-enabled sensing capability on customer linking capability, financial performance,
market performance, and strategic business value.
In this vein, by integrating BDA with other robust tools to support the analytics mod-
els, like artificial intelligence (Dubey et al. 2019b), simulation (Vieira et al. 2019), and
dashboards software to visualization (Jha et al. 2020), managers could improve their orga-
nization’s sensing capability. Consequently, significant improvements can be expected in
terms of conducting operations and identifying business opportunities in the market (Fosso
Wamba et al. 2020a), as well as in firm’s performance (Arunachalam et al. 2018; Mikalef
et al. 2020b).

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Secondly, managers and practitioners should pay attention to the organization’s analytics
culture, by improving internal knowledge (Upadhyay and Kumar 2020), enhancing internal
and external collaboration, promoting technology innovation investments, and ensuring diffu-
sion of knowledge between strategic partners. It will also be necessary to monitor cutting-edge
technologies and their adoption adequately. Thirdly, it is in the interest of managers to take
adequate measures to capture the contribution of the BDA-enabled sensing capability to the
attainment of organizational outcomes. Finally, managers and practitioners should be able
to discern those organizational outcomes that failed to help reach the expected performance,
in case of poor integration of BDA-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture into the
organization.

5.3 Limitations and opportunities for future research

Our study harbors some limitations that also acts as future research avenues. The first one
is related to our collecting data by using a web-based survey questionnaire, which ended
up reflecting a specific behavior at some point in time. In such circumstances, longitudinal
studies could be combined with the survey to better capture the dynamics of the effects of
BDA-enabled sensing capability and analytics culture on organizational outcomes.
Another limitation resides in that a single geographic area (the USA) was selected for
data collection. This may render it difficult to generalize our findings and fully consider
them in other parts of the world. Future studies could mitigate this effect by using our model
to compare different countries’ results concerning the dynamics of BDA-enabled sensing
capability and analytics culture for the achievement of organizational outcomes. Finally, we
did not analyze whether there are differences according to the respondent’s industry type.
Future studies could investigate if there is a significant difference in the effects of BDA-
enabled sensing capability and analytics culture on organizational outcomes according to the
type of industry segment. Moreover, the respondent’s field could integrate other representative
industry segments such as transportation, manufacturing, fashion industry, education, among
others.

6 Conclusion

The main objective of this work was to investigate the influence of big data analytics-
enabled sensing capability and the analytics culture on organizational outcomes. Besides,
we explored the effects of the analytics culture as a mediator in the relationship between
big data analytics-enabled sensing capability and organizational outcomes. Assessing these
relationships required an original conceptual model. We applied a web-based survey ques-
tionnaire to collect data from U.S. mid-level executive analytics professionals with prior
experience in business analytics projects.
Our findings served as meaningful contributions to the literature on dynamic capabilities,
data-driven innovations, and operations. The first contribution resides in the fact that we
demonstrated the influence of BDA-enabled sensing capabilities on crucial organizational
outcomes (i.e., customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and
strategic business value). As the second contribution, we departed from previous studies
where data-driven is modeled as a predictor of BDAC to clearly set out that BDA-enabled
sensing capabilities exert important positive influence as a predictor of analytics culture.
The third contribution is epitomized by our demonstration of the critical influence of analyt-

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ics culture on customer linking capability, financial performance, market performance, and
strategic business value. Finally, we uncovered the effect of analytics culture as a media-
tor on the relationship between BDA-enabled sensing capabilities and the aforementioned
organizational outcomes.
From the managerial perspective, the work’s findings call on managers to pay strong
attention to and put in more effort for the organization’s analytics culture. They are also
suggested to mobilize more funding to enhance organizational outcomes enabled by BDA-
based sensing capability and analytics culture while making sure other driving factors such as
skills, relationships, collaboration, cooperation, norms, and knowledge sharing are available
at the intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels.

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institutional affiliations.

Affiliations

Samuel Fosso Wamba1 · Maciel M. Queiroz2 · Lunwen Wu3 ·

Uthayasankar Sivarajah4

B Lunwen Wu
wulunwen@swufe.edu.cn
Samuel Fosso Wamba
s.fosso-wamba@tbs-education.fr
Maciel M. Queiroz
maciel.queiroz@docente.unip.br
Uthayasankar Sivarajah
U.Sivarajah@bradford.ac.uk
1 TBS Business School, 1 Place Alphonse Jourdain, 31068 Toulouse, France
2 Postgraduate Program in Business Administration, Paulista University - UNIP, São Paulo
04026-002, Brazil
3 School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu
610074, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China
4 Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences, University of Bradford, Richmond Rd, Bradford
BD7 1DP, UK

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