Organizational Success in the Big Data Era: Development of the Albrecht Data-Embracing Climate Scale (ADEC)

In today’s information age, technological advances in virtually every industry allow organizations, both big and small, to create and store more data than ever before. Though data are highly abundant, they are still often underutilized resources with regard to improving organizational performance. The popularity and intrigue around big data specifically has opened up new opportunities to study how organizations embrace evidence and use it to improve their business. Generally, the focus of big data has mainly been on specific technologies, techniques, or its use in everyday life; however, what has been critically missing from the conversation is the consideration of culture and climate to support effective data use in organizations. Currently, many organizations want to develop a data-embracing climate or create changes to make their existing climates more data-informed. The purpose of this project was to develop a scale to assess the current state of data usage in organizations, which can be used to help organizations measure how well they manage, share, and use data to make informed decisions. I defined the phenomena of a data-embracing climate based on reviewing a broad range of business, computer science, and industrial-organizational psychology literature. Using this definition, I developed a scale to measure this newly defined construct by first conducting an exploratory factor analysis, then an item retranslation task, and finally a confirmatory factor analysis. This research provides support for the reliability and validity of the Albrecht Data-Embracing Climate Scale (ADEC); however, the future of this new area of research could benefit by replicating the results of this study and gaining support for the new construct. Implications for science and practice are discussed. I sought to make a valuable contribution to the field of I-O psychology and to make a useful instrument for researchers and practitioners in multiple and diverse fields. I hope others will benefit from this scale to measure how organizations use evidence from data to make informed decisions and gain a competitive advantage beyond intuition alone. Do not cite without express permission from the author