Exploration–Exploitation: How business analytics powers organisational ambidexterity for environmental sustainability

Simultaneous exploration and exploitation (i.e., exploration–exploitation) can help a firm address short-term environmental requirements and ensure long-term environmental viability. Exploration–exploitation, however, challenges organisational practices because they compete for resources and time. While business analytics (BA) offers the potential to overcome these challenges, research to date offers very limited insights into how BA capabilities interact with ambidextrous capabilities to realise environmental value. We address this issue by conducting a comparative case study at a bank and at a real-estate trust through the theoretical lens of dynamic capabilities. We develop a process model to explain how BA powers ambidextrous practices to achieve sustainability outcomes over time. We uncover two mechanisms: a BA-powered context shaping mechanism by which BA powers contextual ambidexterity at the employee level using data availability, timeliness, and analytics culture; and a BA-powered resource linking mechanism by which BA powers structural ambidexterity at intra- and inter-organisational levels using holistic insights and analytics leadership. Our model highlights the contextual factors that condition the extent to which a firm moves along the continuum of exploration–exploitation. We also define a new dimension of sustainability outcomes which we label eco-awareness to explain how BA shapes employees' environmental alertness and enables the paradigm shift in an organisation's sustainability mindset

Business Analytics (BA) - powered transformation for environmental and social sustainability in organisations: A dynamic capabilities perspective

The impetus to address issues of global warming, pollution, and social inclusiveness continues to grow, forcing organisations to focus on their environmental and social sustainability. The sustainability imperative has a direct impact on how organisations operate and define their competitive advantage, this study will provide insights into the BA-powered capabilities leveraged by organisations to achieve their sustainability goals. Previous studies have explored the role of big data analytics capabilities in strengthening dynamic capabilities (DC), and the positive relationship between DC, environmental, social, and economic sustainability, yet have neglected to analyze the BA-powered capabilities that transform organisations for sustainability. This study examines how BA can facilitate the development of socio-technical capabilities to enable organisations to adapt, reconfigure and transform their internal processes to achieve sustainability and understand capabilities required to (i) unlock sustainability-related insights from analytics, and (ii) transform insights into value-creating activities that help attain sustainability goals within organisations

The importance for Higher Education (HE) to embed the UN's (United Nations) SDG's (Sustainability Development Goals) into the IS (Information Systems) Curriculum

To succeed in today’s dynamic environment, Higher Education (HE) must continue to evolve and adapt at a rapid pace and create resilient graduates empowered with the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA’s) to believe that they too “can” make a difference. It is timely for the HE sector to embrace and embed the United Nation's (UN’s) Sustainability Development Goals (SDG's) into the Information Systems (IS) curriculum and course offerings with a view to ensuring that graduates are cognisant of both the power of IS and IT and the importance of ensuring the equitable and ethical use of IS and IT. In particular, HE must ensure that we empower our IS Graduates to tackle and challenge complex problems in today's fast-paced digital world whilst at the same time, ensuring a fair and equitable outcome for all. Our ultimate aim as educators is to ensure that our graduates are both industry-ready and cognisant of their social and ethical responsibilities as outlined in the UN’s SDG’s