The effect of organisational culture on the relationship between data-driven decision-making and firm performance

Abstract

Research has indicated that although data-driven decision-making has provided organisations with a competitive advantage, its adoption has been slow over the years. With culture playing a vital role in adopting technologies and how employees adopt them or react to change, this paper investigated if culture influenced the adoption of data-driven decision-making. By investigating the moderating effect of innovative culture, learning culture and data culture on the relationship between data-driven decision-making and firm performance. The study followed a quantitative, descriptive, deductive cross-sectional research approach to evaluate the conceptual model. Moderated regression tests were conducted to understand if culture moderated the relationship between data-driven decision-making and firm performance. These findings emphasized that from the population studied, innovative culture, learning culture, and data culture do not moderate the relationship between data-driven decision-making and firm performance both when culture existed individually or co-existed in the model. This was contrary to the literature where these cultural aspects supported data-driven decision-making. Its existence contributed to better decision-making, knowledge sharing, cross collaboration amongst business areas, and knowledge creation.