This chapter argues for supplementing Big Data Analytics (BDA) literature with approaches informed by critical management studies. I begin by describing BDA in organizations and explore four current approaches to understanding BDA in this context (as efficiency, skepticism, socio-materiality, and critical data studies). Following a discussion of the four predominant threads of BDA research, I advance an argument that BDA literature should pay more attention to power and resistance within organizations and that there is a need to investigate how BDA enables modes of power and resistance within organizations. This chapter aims to present four current approaches to BDA and subsequently suggests a critical management studies perspective that offers resources for critical investigations into how BDA can alter the exercise of power inside organizations and condition the relationship between subjects inside the organization. This can contribute to improve our understanding of power asymmetries and mitigate the oppression that BDA enables in organizations.
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your Elgar Online account