Business Analytics Adoption and Technological Intensity: An Efficiency Analysis

Abstract

Despite the overwhelming popularity of business analytics (BA) as an evidence-based decision support mechanism, the impact of its adoption on organizational performance has received scant attention from the research community. This study aims to unfold the adoption efficiencies of BA and its applications by proposing a data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology to holistically assess the underlying factors with respect to the level of achievement regarding organizational performance, operational performance, and financial performance. Furthermore, the study unveils the firm-level and sectoral-level discrepancies in BA adoption efficiency in different industry settings. Relying on survey data obtained from 204 executives in various industries, this study provides empirical support for the cross-industry differences in BA adoption efficiencies. The results show that the firms in low-tech industries seem to achieve the highest efficiency from adopting BA regarding its influence on firm performance.