Exploring Qualitative Data: the use of Big Data technology as support in strategic decision-making

This paper is a preliminary study that investigates whether the Big Data technology contributes to making the strategic decision-making more objective. Decisions depend on the decision-makers´ knowledge and intuition, the characteristics of decision task as well as the quality of the data analysed. Focusing on the decision objective component, it appears that the contemporary business context is characterised by: (i) a vast amount of data, but not all of this is meaningful; and (ii) an unexplored kind of data, namely qualitative data. The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly, to elaborate a theoretical framework integrating Big Data technology into strategic decision-making. And secondly, assessing the feasibility of the elaborated model on a strategic variable in the hi-tech field.