How does big data lead to performance advantage? Examining the role of resource and capability complementarity

Despite the growing interest in big data technologies among businesses, there is limited insight on how companies can maximize these technologies to positively impact their competitive advantage. Building upon the resource-based view, capabilities theory, and resource complementarity theory, we argue that a firm‘s data-driven culture complements its big data technologies to build big data human and process capabilities, which subsequently enhance a firm‘s operational performance. Using data from 154 Canadian firms, we confirmed the complementarity of data-driven culture and big data technologies on the development of big data human and process capabilities. We also found that big data human capability alone does not affect operational performance but reinforces the positive effect of big data process capability on operational performance. These results have important implications for theory and practice.