The impact of big data adoption on competitive advantage in achieving sustainable development goals: the moderating role of mimetic pressure

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are global objectives focusing on economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Despite the previous attempts to define indicators and measurement approaches, the challenges for monitoring progress toward the SDGs remains a big challenge. Big data (BD) analytics has the potential to help organizations with this quest. It offers support with decision-making toward the goals, as well as predictive capabilities, insights into trends, and progress monitoring. However, the value of BD in SDG strategies and its organizational adoption have yet to be fully explored. This study set out to investigate key determinants of BD analysis adoption, prioritizing factors affecting organizations in their goals toward SDGs through BD analysis. The proposed model investigated eight variables that were expected to affect the BD adoption intention that are linked to the firm’s internal capability in the context of SDGs; grouped into four aspects; data quality, technology, human, and organizational. It also explored the link between BD adoption and competitive advantage in achieving SDGs. In addition, the role of mimetic pressure was examined. Based on the survey results collected from 389 respondents from large organizations in various sectors in Malaysia, data quality (accuracy, inconsistency, and pertinence), technological infrastructure, and knowledge of data analytics were driving forces in BD adoption while we failed to find a significant effect of complexity and learning culture. BD adoption intention and mimetic pressure’s effect on competitive advantage were confirmed. These findings collectively contribute to a better understanding of the factors influencing BD analytics adoption and its implications for achieving SDGs, highlighting the importance of data quality, technological infrastructure, top management support, and mimetic pressure in BD adoption for SDGs. This study contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of BD adoption in the context of SDGs, addressing a gap in the existing literature.