A Temporal View of Business Analytics in Interorganizational Relationships: Enablers and Barriers to Value Creation

By exploring how investing in business analytics (BA) influences interorganizational relationships (IORs), this study addresses two gaps in the literature: The lack of empirical evidence on mechanisms through which BA influences IORs both positively and negatively, and the need to identify the specific mechanisms that link BA investment to improved IOR performance. The study employs a multiple-case survey methodology and analyzes 71 case studies sourced from secondary data to investigate the impact of BA on IORs. The method productively utilizes the existing published studies to examine the BA implementation process in different settings and study the long-term use of BA. Absorptive capacity is used as a theoretical framework in this research to show how BA enables IOR value creation. The findings show that investing in BA tools and technologies alone does not guarantee success. Instead, firms must carefully tailor their BA investment to their business needs to ensure success while avoiding potential pitfalls associated with BA deployment in IORs.