The Impact of Big Data Analytics on Firm Sustainable Performance

Big data analytics (BDA) have emerged as a buzzword since the 2010s, and despite the tremendous research interest that they instigated, their impact on firm sustainable performance (FSP) remains largely unknown. This study conceptualizes firm sustainable performance from a triple bottom line (TBL) perspective to assess the impact of BDA on the economic, social, and environmental lines of firm performance. Additionally, the study relies exclusively on independent third-party data merged and aggregated to test the hypotheses. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is applied to the BDA and FSP data of 522 firms from the US S&P500 Index and the Canadian S&P500 / TSX60 Index. The findings suggest that BDA positively impacts overall FSP because it is positively related to the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. However, our distinction between predictive and prescriptive analytics further reveals that prescriptive analytics do not necessarily outperform the FSP results obtained with predictive analytics