Benefits from Big Data Analytics Projects: A Critical System Heuristics Approach to Boundary Judgements

Big data analytics (BDA) has strategic value for many large organisations. However, obtaining evident benefits from BDA projects requires complex orchestration across organisational boundaries and entities. The requisite ability to distinguish a potential BDA benefit in its’ organisational context has nevertheless received limited research attention. Against this backdrop, we report a case study of benefit conceptualization in a BDA project at a large wind turbine manufacturer (Vestas). Using critical systems heuristics, a framework of systems’ stakeholders, stakes, and stakeholding issues, we analyse how the stakeholders in Vestas make boundary judgements for the BDA benefits they plan to realize. This analysis shows how a BDA benefit is a complex system involving negotiations on how a benefit ought to become evident in the organization. We discuss the implications of this finding for how BDA projects can make their boundary judgements for planned benefits explicit and defensible.