Chapter 15: How “Big” Can Big Data Analytics Be in SMEs: Influence on Rational Decision Making and Organisational Performance

In the present competitive and disruptive arena, big data analytics has emerged as a revolutionary approach enabling sound decision making leading to enhanced organisational performance. However, extant studies on big data analytics in organisational perspective is limited, specifically in the case of SMEs. The tenet is that organisations bank on superior decisionmaking capabilities through data-driven insights, like big data analytics. So, it is imperative to explore the intertwined themes from organisational perspectives. In this backdrop, this chapter addresses the key concerns with focus on the enablers and deterrents in big data and its analytics in the context of SMEs and mainly to decipher the ways it contributes to their enhanced organisational performance It investigates the moderating role of big data analytics on the relationship between decision making rationality and organisational performance. So, it adopts a crosssectional research approach, based on primary data collected from the SMEs firms in Delhi NCR. The key finding of the study emanating from the regression and interaction effect of big data analytics reinforce the use of big data analytics as the moderator, which affects the relationship between decision making and organisational performance. Thus, it reinstates that the use of rational decision making model in the organisation to result in higher performance. The chapter thus presents important insights for developing data-driven insights using the BDA in context of SMEs for driving organisational performance.