Decision-making performance in big data era: the role of actual Business Intelligence systems use and affecting external constraints

Business Intelligence (BI) has received wide recognition in the business world as a tool to address ‘big’ data-related problems, to help managers understand their businesses and to assist them in making effective decisions. To date, however, there have been few studies which have clearly articulated a theoretically grounded model that explains how the use of BI systems provides benefits to organisations, or explains what factors influence the actual use of BI systems. To fully achieve greater decision-making performance and effective use of BI, we contend that BI systems integration with a systems user’s work routine (dependence on the systems) is essential. Following this argument, we examine the effects of system dependent use along with effective use (infusion) on individual’s decision-making performance with BI. Additionally, we propose that a fact-based decision-making culture, and data quality of source systems are constraints factors that impact on BI system dependence and infusion. We adopt a quantitative method approach. Specifically, we will conduct a two-wave cross-sectional survey targeting 400 North American BI users who describe themselves as both using a BI system and making decision using data from the system. We expect to make an important theoretical contribution to BI literature by providing a model that explains the dimensions of actual BI system use, and makes a practical contribution by providing insights into how organisational external constraints facilitate BI dependence and infusion in the pursuit of BI-enabled performance gain.