Big data analytics capability and social innovation: the mediating role of knowledge exploration and exploitation

While many organizations have successfully leveraged big data analytics capabilities to improve their performance, our understanding is limited on whether and how big data analytics capabilities affect social innovation in organizations. Based on the organizational information processing theory and the organizational learning theory, this study aims to investigate how big data analytics capabilities support social innovation, and how knowledge ambidexterity mediates this relationship. A total of 354 high-tech companies in China, this study shows that big data analytics management, big data analytics technology, and big data analytics personnel capabilities all have positive effects on social innovation. In addition, both knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation play a mediating role in this process. Furthermore, a polynomial regression and response surface analysis shows that social innovation increases when knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation are highly consistent but declines when knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation are inconsistent. This study not only provides new perspectives for understanding how big data analytics capabilities contribute to social innovation, complementing the existing literature on big data analytics capabilities and social innovation, but also provides important practical guidance on how organizations can develop big data analytics capabilities to improve social innovation and solve social problems in the digital age.