An ambidextrous approach on the business analytics-competitive advantage relationship: Exploring the moderating role of business analytics strategy 
Technological Forecasting and Social Change
, 179
2022.
Author(s): Amir Ashrafi. Ahad Zareravasan.
Topics: Information systems strategy Data & Business analytics
Objective and main results
The study investigates 1) the impact of business analytics (BA) on firm competitive advantage, and 2) how innovative ambidexterity and BA strategy contribute to the BA-competitive advantage link.
BA involves use of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics, while innovative ambidexterity refers to the concurrent development of both incremental and radical innovations. The study classifies BA strategy into the categories of “innovator”, “conservative”, and “undefined”.
Main findings:
The results show that BA has a significant positive relationship with both exploration and exploitation. BA does not influence competitive advantage directly. Innovative ambidexterity fully mediates the BA – competitive advantage relationship.
- The mediating effect of exploitative practices between the BA-competitive advantage linkage is stronger than that the effect of explorative orientation.
- BA innovator and conservative strategies moderate the links between BA and explorative innovation and exploitative innovation. Such moderation effect is not observed for the BA undefined strategy.
Summary of practical implications
Organizations should understand that using BA techniques alone will not automatically generate competitive advantage. Organizations need to focus on more significant factors than just data and technology to sense market changes and respond to them to achieve their predefined goals.
Managers must develop and pursue both exploitation and exploration and balance the two orientations to achieve sustained performance.
To achieve a higher level of ambidexterity and competitive value, managers and IT executives must realize the crucial role of a well-defined BA strategy.
- Organizations need to adopt either BA innovator or conservative to enhance the effects of using BA on exploration and exploitation.
- To contribute significantly to ambidexterity and firms’ competitive advantage, the IT department should strive to take either a BA innovator or a conservative approach to align with business strategy.