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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of High Technology Management Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hitech

Business intelligence and analytics as a driver of dynamic and

operational capabilities in times of intense
macroeconomic turbulence
Valter Moreno a, b, *, Flavia Cavazotte c, Wagner de Souza Carvalho d
a
Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), R. São Francisco Xavier, 524 – Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 20550-000, Brazil
b
Faculdades Ibmec, Avenida Presidente Wilson, 118 – Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 20030-020, Brazil
c
IAG Business School, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ), Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225 – Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
22451-900, Brazil
d
Business Ingelligence, Controllership Department, Oi S.A. Rua General Polidoro, 99 – Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22280-004, Brazil

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Despite growing investments in Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A), the business value
Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) generation process associated with the adoption of these technologies is still unclear. Conse­
Dynamic capabilities quently, managers face difficulties in justifying such initiatives and subsequently evaluating their
Resource-based view (RBV)
results. For companies that operate in extremely turbulent environments, the outcomes of BI&A
Marketing capabilities
investments may be even harder to estimate. In this study, we propose and statistically evaluate a
causal model that connects the availability of BI&A resources and capabilities in a company to its
operational marketing capabilities. Marketing processes are critical for the generation of in­
novations in products and services, and operational revenues, and thereby, for a firm’s perfor­
mance and competitiveness. In order to assess our model, we applied structural equation
modeling techniques to data collected in multiple units of a large Brazilian telecommunications
company during the worst economic and institutional crisis faced by the country. Our results
suggest that the dynamic capabilities of a company fully mediates the positive effect of BI&A
resources and capabilities on its marketing capabilities. In contrast to what is usually found in the
literature, turbulence did not moderate the effect of dynamic capabilities on marketing
capabilities.

1. Introduction

Interest in Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) has grown over the last years, despite the challenges to assess its capacity to
generate business value. BI&A entails a set of tools, technologies, applications, and processes for gathering, storing, accessing, and
analyzing data to generate useful business information and help users make better decisions (Namvar, Cybulski, & Perera, 2016;
Wixom & Watson, 2010). Investments in BI&A has been a top priority in organizations worldwide (Gartner, 2016). Its global market is
expected to reach US$22.8 billion by 2020 (Ghosh, 2018), despite the skepticism of managers and researchers regarding the actual
return generated by BI&A systems (Fink, Yogev, & Even, 2017; Trieu, 2017). As highlighted by Trieu (2017), research on the processes

* Corresponding author at: Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), R. São Francisco Xavier, 524 – Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 20550-000, Brazil.
E-mail addresses: valter.moreno@eng.uerj.br (V. Moreno), flavia.cavazotte@iag.puc-rio.br (F. Cavazotte), wagnercarvalho@oi.net.br (W. de
Souza Carvalho).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hitech.2020.100389

1047-8310/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Valter Moreno, Journal of High Technology Management Research,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hitech.2020.100389
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V. Moreno et al. Journal of High Technology Management Research xxx (xxxx) xxx

through which BI&A investments and assets bring about competitive advantage in companies is lacking. Although initial qualitative
studies have been conducted to verify the connections between BI&A and the generation of valuable knowledge in companies (Božič &
Dimoviski, 2019), we still need to better understand the nomological network through which BI&A investments translate into
improved organizational capabilities and outcomes, for firms that operate in diverse industries, socioeconomic and cultural contexts.
In this study, we shed light on this issue by proposing and assessing a causal model that connects BI&A resources and capabilities to
a company’s operational marketing capabilities. Furthermore, we argue that the positive impact of BI&A occurs insofar as it leverages
dynamic capabilities that foster innovation in products and services promotion and commercialization (Easterby-Smith, Lyles &
Peteraf, 2009; Teece, 2014). According to the Dynamic Capability Theory (Helfat et al., 2007; Teece, 2007), dynamic capabilities are
essential to the development and renewal of an organization’s internal and external resources and assets, reconfiguring them as needed
to innovate and respond to market and business environment changes (Teece, 2014). Although previous studies have investigated the
connections between BI&A and dynamic capabilities (e.g., Torres, Sidarova & Jones, 2018), they mostly relied on convenience samples
and accounted for only a few relevant control variables at the company and industry levels. Besides, given that IT-enabled dynamic
capabilities are particularly needed to bring about strategic advantage amid environmental turbulence (Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011), our
proposed framework further analyzes the role of the latter construct on the connection between dynamic and operational marketing
capabilities.
We test our model with data collected in multiple units of a large Brazilian telecommunication company. The company provides
voice and data services on fixed or mobile platforms, as well as additional value-added services, such as media and storage solutions for
home consumers and businesses. Given that the Telecom market is characterized by intense technological change, strong competition,
and constant product and marketing innovation, a company’s dynamic capabilities and operational marketing capabilities should be
critical to its performance and competitiveness (Cavusgil, Seggie, & Talay, 2007; Teece, 2014). However, we had the opportunity to
collect our data during the worst economic and institutional crisis in the history of Brazil (Trevizan, 2017). The crisis had devastating
effects on several sectors, and in the abovementioned company in particular. Therefore, we also contribute to the field by: (1)
analyzing the proposed effects of BI&A in the diverse economic and cultural context of a developing country, which has mainly been
overlook in the literature; and (2) exploring the connections between dynamic capabilities and marketing capabilities in an extremely
turbulent environment, which has been rarely done before (cf. Makkonen, Pohjola, Olkkonen, & Koponen, 2014).
This paper is structured as follows. In the next section, we elucidate the theoretical foundations of our framework, focusing on
dynamic capability theory, which sustains the proposed effects of BI&A on performance and competitiveness through the development
of operational marketing processes, especially in turbulent environments. In the second section, we describe the multinational tele­
communications company where we tested our hypotheses and the methodological procedures implemented to gather our data. In the
third section, we present results for both our measurement and structural models. In the last section, we discuss our findings, its
implications for theory and practice, as well as the limitations of our study and new venues for research on the topic.

2. Theoretical foundation and hypotheses

Since the publication of Teece, Pisano, and Shuen’s (1997) seminal work, several authors have been developing conceptual and
empirical studies based on Dynamic Capability Theory (Wilden, Devinney, & Dowling, 2016). In particular, Pavlou and El Sawy (2011)
proposed and evaluated a model that identifies, conceptualizes, and measures four processes related to the operationalization of
dynamic capabilities in companies. They are: (1) environmental monitoring, i.e., the ability to perceive, interpret, and capture op­
portunities and threats in the environment; (2) learning, which is the ability to create new knowledge through the use of both pre-
existing and new knowledge; (3) integration, i.e. the ability to integrate individual knowledge into collective shared knowledge;
and (4) coordination, which is the ability to utilize the resources and capabilities obtained and integrate them to effectively achieve
new organizational capabilities. According to the same authors, to understand the effects of dynamic capabilities on organizational
performance in turbulent environments, it is necessary to examine the former’s link to operational capabilities and a company’s
business processes. Therefore, the effect of dynamic capabilities on organizational performance would be mediated by operational
capabilities. Similarly, several researchers suggest that improvements in organizational performance and the attainment of compet­
itive advantage do not derive directly from a company’s dynamic capabilities; instead, they are a result of the configuration and
effective reconfiguration of their operational capabilities and resulting resources (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Helfat et al., 2007;
Helfat & Peteraf, 2003; Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011; Teece, 2007).
Processes related to understanding and meeting customer needs, typically associated with an organization’s marketing and sales
activities, are especially dependent on the availability of information on the external environment and are particularly affected by
changes in the external context (Cavusgil et al., 2007; Easterby-Smith, Lyles and Peteraf, 2009; Morgan, Vorhies, & Mason, 2009).
Therefore, and considering the importance of marketing processes for generating innovations in products and services and for
operational revenues, the relationship between such processes and the dynamic capabilities of a company becomes critical to its
performance and competitiveness, especially in turbulent environments (Teece, 2014). Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1. The dynamic capabilities of an organization have a direct and positive effect on its operational marketing capabilities.
The Dynamic Capability Theory suggests that the positive effects of these capabilities are more intense in turbulent environments,
which are those characterized by changes that affect how companies compete and respond to the needs of their customers (Helfat et al.,
2007; Teece, 2007; Teece et al., 1997). In such contexts, if there is no renewal of existing operational capabilities, the competitive
advantages achieved by a firm may be lost eventually (Protogerou, Caloghirou, & Lioukas, 2012). On the other hand, turbulent en­
vironments can also generate new opportunities, which often require the reconfiguration of resources and capabilities existing in a

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company for it to capitalize upon those opportunities (Van den Bosch, Volberda & De Boer, 1999).
Pavlou and El Sawy (2011) relate an environment’s turbulence to the frequency and volume of changes, and the level of uncertainty
present in the market. Two factors are essential to define the level of dynamism of the business environment: (1) market turmoil,
associated with uncertainties regarding customer demands and competitors’ strategies; and (2) technological turbulence, related to the
frequency of technological advances relevant to the firm’s operation. The empirical results obtained by Pavlou and El Sawy (2011)
suggest that the higher the degree of turbulence in a company’s environment, the more positive are the effects of its dynamic capa­
bilities on the performance of new product development processes. Likewise, a dynamic environment requires an organization to
employ its monitoring, learning, integration, and coordination capabilities to develop, customize, offer, and monetize the promotion
and commercialization of its products and services in a fast and aligned way to customer needs, while also considering the strategies
adopted by competitors. Thus, we define the following hypothesis:
H2. The positive effect of dynamic capabilities on an organization’s operational marketing capabilities is moderated by the level of turbulence
in the company’s environment: the higher the level of turbulence, the more intense the effect.
BI&A systems and related technology’s characteristics, critical success factors, impacts, and evolution are the subject of several
studies developed in the last decade (Fink et al., 2017; Gandomi & Haider, 2015; Gomes et al., 2011; Wixom, Watson, & Werner, 2011,
Wixom, Yen, & Relich, 2013). Chen, Chiang, and Storey (2012), based on a broad literature review, have identified the main tech­
nological characteristics and capabilities related to three stages of BI&A evolution, proposing research topics and guidelines for
educational programs in Business Intelligence and Analytics.
In a more recent literature review, Trieu (2017) analyzed the process by which BI&A systems generate value for the organizations
that adopt them, highlighting aspects that need to be investigated more thoroughly, such as the connections between investments,
BI&A assets (or capabilities), organizational impacts, and the value that is generated. Fink et al. (2017) went further, proposing and
evaluating a model for value generation through investments in Business Intelligence. Their results suggest that investments in BI&A
infrastructure generate value for the organization as they enable the development of Business Intelligence capabilities. Yeoh, Richards,
and Wang (2013) detail the process of developing these capabilities, suggesting that the effective application of BI&A artifacts and
knowledge, in the business context, depends on the organization’s ability to absorb, integrate and exploit new knowledge, i.e., its
absorptive capacity (Lane, Koka & Pathak, 2006; Roberts et al., 2012). Yeoh et al. (2013) argue that the company’s BI&A assimilation
generates positive impacts on several business processes (e.g., customer relationships, marketing and sales, operations) as it provides
better inputs for decision making and the development of new products and services.
The effective use of BI&A systems would enable companies to obtain, consolidate, and analyze external and internal data to
improve decision making, create and customize products, services and solutions, develop more effective marketing campaigns, and so
on (Chen et al., 2012; Fink et al., 2017; Trieu, 2017). BI&A systems can help an organization better understand its internal and external
environment, as it contributes to the development of new knowledge through the combination of prior knowledge and insights gained
from static and predictive model analyses (Chen et al., 2012; Yeoh et al., 2013).
According to Pavlou and El Sawy (2011), the main components or dimensions of dynamic capabilities (i.e., understanding the
external environment, learning, integrating resources, and coordination) depend on the availability and sharing of information and
knowledge about a firm’s internal processes and the environment in which it operates (Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011; Teece, 2007). Thus, we
believe that Business Intelligence resources and capabilities can generate value for an organization insofar as they help it to develop its
dynamic capabilities, which, in turn, allow operational resources and capabilities to be obtained and aligned with the needs of the
business. Therefore, we propose:
H3. The company’s dynamic capabilities completely mediate the effects of the availability of BI&A resources and capabilities on the com­
pany’s operational marketing capabilities.

3. Research method

We conducted a quantitative cross-sectional study (survey), measuring the constructs of interest through scales that are available in
the literature. All scales used were of the Likert type, with five levels (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).
We measured the availability of BI&A resources and capabilities using the BI&A competence scale proposed by Yeoh et al. (2013). It
includes items to evaluate the construct’s dimensions, namely: BI&A structure, BI&A operation, and BI&A team.
We measured dynamic capabilities, environmental turbulence, and operational marketing capabilities using the scales developed by
Pavlou and El Sawy (2011). In the authors’ work, they defined these constructs as being multidimensional. The dynamic capabilities
construct consists of four dimensions: environment understanding, learning ability, integration ability, and coordination ability. The dy­
namic environment construct entails the market turbulence and technological turbulence dimensions. The operational marketing capa­
bility construct entails the technical capability, customer understanding capability, and managing capability dimensions.
Following the original definitions (Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011; Yeoh et al., 2013) and recommendations made in the literature
(Mackenzie, Podsakoff, & Podsakoff, 2011), we adopted reflexive measurement models for the constructs availability of BI&A resources
and capabilities, dynamic capabilities, and operational marketing capabilities. For the environmental turbulence construct, we used a
formative measurement model (Pavlou and El Sawy, 2011).
Since the constructs involved in the study hypotheses are defined either at the group, business unit, or organization level, scores
obtained at the individual level had to be grouped by their arithmetic mean. For this, we calculated the agreement scores between the
respondents in the same group, using the rWG index (Lebreton & Senter, 2007).

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As control variables, we used average workgroup tenure, group size, and percentage of male group members as indicators of
diversity.
We collected our data in the Retail Department (B2C) of a large multinational Telecom company that operated in the Brazilian
market. At the time, the company accrued a gross monthly revenue of over R$ 2.0 billion from that department only, which was
responsible for all assignments related to the commercial process (e.g., segmentation, definition of sales channels, creation of new
products and offers, pricing, direct and indirect marketing, monetization, retention, and sales). The department was divided into 388
management offices, distributed throughout the country, and employed 3578 employees. Since 2014, it had been the focus of a BI&A
corporate structuring project. The purpose of the project was to integrate critical operational and strategic information into a single
platform that was easy to access and use, and that enabled visual exploration of business data. However, at the time we collected our
data, the system had not yet been fully adopted by the entire unit, and there were substantial differences in intensity and manner of use
among the offices. Also, the department’s geographical distribution exposed its offices to reasonably distinct business environments,
due to the differences between the regional markets in which they operated. Although the areas followed the same policies, structures,
and internal systems, they tended to be subjected to different levels of turbulence in a country as large as Brazil. Even so, the country
was going through the worst economic and institutional crisis in its history (Trevizan, 2017), which had a strong overall impact on the
company. Thus, by collecting our data in this single organization, we were able to control for the influence of internal factors on
organizational performance while ensuring variations in the constructs of interest, including the turbulence level.
During the data collection, we did not include employees who worked in stores, because they did not have direct contact with the
internal processes of the company. As a result, the research universe was limited to 187 offices and 1224 employees, who were engaged
in the entire cycle of retail activities.
The data was collected through an electronic questionnaire made available to potential participants. In addition to the above scales,
the questionnaire included questions to obtain the participants’ demographic profile (gender, age, educational level, and professional
experience).
After obtaining authorization from the company’s HR to conduct the research, an invitation to participate in the study was sent to
potential participants by e-mail. The invitation contained an explanation of the survey’s purpose and assured that participants’ in­
formation was confidential.
From the 1224 employees invited, 131 answered the electronic questionnaire completely. The Mahalanobis distance (Riani,
Atkinson & Cerioli, 2009) was used to identify outliers, with a level of significance (α) of 0.001. After the elimination of outliers, the
final sample consisted of 116 individuals, distributed in 42 workgroups. The calculated rWG indices were close to or greater than 0.70,
which is the value traditionally recommended in the literature (Lebreton & Senter, 2007). In this way, the individual scores for the
constructs of interest could be aggregated to the group level.
Approximately 53% of the final sample was of male employees, and 47% of female employees. Almost all respondents (99%) had an
undergraduate degree. Their average company tenure was 6.66 years, with a standard deviation of 6.19. The average group size in the
sample was 12.19 employees, with a standard deviation of 7.96.
The study hypotheses were statistically evaluated through Partial Least Squares (PLS) structural equations modeling, using the
SmartPLS 2.0 M3 software. PLS has shown to be robust to violations of multivariate normality, to model formative and reflexive

Fig. 1. Theoretical model.

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constructs adequately, and to require smaller sample sizes than covariance-based structural equation modeling (Chin, 2010; Hair et al.,
2017). To assess the significance of the proposed effects, we used the bootstrapping technique with 1000 samples of 42 cases each.

4. Findings

Due to the small sample size, it was necessary to reduce the number of parameters estimated in the PLS analysis. For this reason, we
used the constructs’ dimensions as indicators of their respective latent variables. The score for each dimension was calculated as the
arithmetic average of its indicators. Fig. 1 shows the model evaluated in this study.
A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to evaluate the quality of the measurement model. Table 1 summarizes the
overall results. All indicators had statistically significant loads (α = 0.01) above 0.70, while also not being substantially associated with
any latent variables other than those corresponding to their respective constructs. The values of Average Extracted Variance (AVE),
Composite Reliability (CR), and Cronbach’s alpha (αC), and the fact that the square root value of AVE for each variable was higher than
the correlations of the respective latent variable with the other latent variables suggested that our measurement model had appropriate
convergent and discriminant validity (Chin, 2010; Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2013). It is worth noting that although Cronbach’s alpha
for operational marketing capabilities was below 0.70, the AVE and CR values were above those recommended in the literature (Chin,
2010).
Fig. 2 shows the results obtained for the structural model. Our proposed model was able to explain a substantial proportion of the
variance in dynamic capabilities and operational marketing capability (R2 = 0.39 and 0.50, respectively).
As posited in H1, dynamic capabilities had a positive and statistically significant effect on operational marketing capabilities (β =
0.51, p < 0.05). Thus, organizational units with stronger dynamic capabilities seem to have more technically developed marketing
processes, stronger managerial capabilities, and a better understanding of the behavior and needs of their customers. On the other
hand, no empirical support was obtained for H2, as the interaction term between dynamic capabilities and environmental turbulence
was not statistically significant (β = − 0.18, p = 0.28).
It is worth mentioning that the estimated effect of market turbulence on environmental turbulence was not statistically significant
(β = 0.39, p = 0.18). This suggests that perceptions of environmental turbulence were more strongly associated with the intensity of
technological changes in the Telecom industry, than with changes in customer behavior and the set of products and services offered by
competitors. Thus, although the development and offer of technological solutions are indeed crucial to the telecommunications in­
dustry, the measures we used to assess environmental turbulence might not be able to capture the full scope of the construct’s domain
adequately. It is possible that, at least in part, the rejection of hypothesis H2 was due to this issue. Another possible explanation is a
reduction of the statistical power of our significance tests due to the small size of our sample.
BI&A resources and capabilities had a significant positive effect on dynamic capabilities (β = 0.62, p < 0.001), but a non-significant
direct effect on operational marketing capabilities (β = − 0.05, p = 0.76). Also, its calculated indirect effect on marketing capabilities
was positive and statistically significant (β = 0.28, p < 0.001). When taken together, these findings suggest that the contribution of
BI&A resources and capabilities to the development of a company’s operational marketing capabilities is fully realized through its
positive influence on the company’s dynamic capabilities. Thus, we obtained empirical support for the total mediation hypothesis
defined in H3.
To further explore the role of the environmental turbulence in our particular dataset, we used the estimated coefficients to plot the
predicted relationship between dynamic capabilities and operational marketing capabilities at two distinct turbulence levels. Fig. 3
shows the relationships for the highest and lowest possible values of the turbulence scale. Although, on average, operational marketing
capabilities are more developed for higher levels of turbulence, their relationship to dynamic capabilities appears to be lessened
compared to that estimated for lower turbulence levels. Thus, in our sample, strengthening dynamic capabilities in more turbulent
environments would tend to generate lower gains in operational marketing capabilities than it would do in less turbulent environ­
ments. We discuss this result in the next section.

5. Discussion

Given the scarcity of empirical research that investigates how investments in BI&A resources and capabilities generate business
value, this study makes an essential contribution to the scholarly debate on the subject. We further theoretical knowledge of how BI&A
technologies can affect business outcomes by developing a causal model based on the Dynamic Capabilities Theory. The model
proposes that the availability of BI&A resources (capabilities, structure, and operation) in a company can generate positive impacts on

Table 1
Reflexive constructs measuring model results.
Latent variables Ind.a Average Std. Dev. AVE CR αC 1 2 3
b
1. BI&A resources and capabilities 3,00 2,07 0,42 0,66 0,85 0,75 0,81 – –
2. Dynamic capabilities 4,00 2,05 0,55 0,77 0,93 0,90 0,62c 0,88 –
3. Operational marketing capabilities 3,00 1,99 0,38 0,53 0,77 0,54 0,42 0,61 0,73
a
Number of indicators.
b
Square root of AVE.
c
Correlations between latent variables.

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Fig. 2. Structural model results.

Fig. 3. Effect of turbulence on the relationship between dynamic capabilities and operational marketing capabilities.

its operational capabilities only to the extent that it promotes the development of dynamic capabilities. Furthermore, it proposes that
the positive effect of dynamic capabilities on operational capabilities is intensified by the level of turbulence in a firm’s business
environment.
Our statistical analysis, based on data collected from several offices within the retail division of a Brazilian telecommunications
multinational, confirmed two of the three proposed hypotheses. Empirical support was obtained for the full mediation of the effect of
the availability of BI&A resources and capabilities on operational marketing capabilities by the dynamic capabilities of the firm. In this
way, our results suggest that Business Intelligence and Analytics investments tend to leverage operational marketing performance only
to the extent that they improve a firm’s ability to understand its business environment, obtain, absorb, disseminate and integrate new
knowledge into its existing knowledge base, and develop and reallocate resources and organizational capabilities to respond to market
needs. These findings clarify and complement the arguments proposed in the literature (Božič & Dimoviski, 2019; Chen et al., 2012;
Fink et al., 2017; Wixom et al., 2011) by making explicit the role of a company’s dynamic capabilities, promoted by BI&A investments,
in the generation of business value at the organizational process level (cf. Makkonen et al., 2014; Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011).
Our findings do not allow us to conclude that increases in the level of environmental turbulence would strengthen the positive
effects of dynamic capabilities on operational capabilities, as suggested by the Dynamic Capability Theory (Teece, 2007; Teece, 2014;
Teece et al., 1997). As previously explained, this result may be due to problems in the measurement of turbulence in the Telecom
market, as well as to the small size of our sample. Still, it should be noted that Brazil was experiencing the most significant economic
crisis in its history at the time the data was collected. The situation had profound impacts on the Telecom industry, creating volatility

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and uncertainties that were probably much more intense than those typically associated with changes in consumption patterns or
technologies relevant to the sector. Thus, the responses collected with Pavlou and El Sawy’s (2011) turbulence scale may not reflect the
actual level of turbulence perceived by the respondents, thereby affecting the results of our tests.
Nevertheless, Makkonen et al. (2014, p. 2707) alert that “instability comes in different forms in the market environment, and the
significance of dynamic capabilities varies depending on the nature of the instability.” Indeed, the exploratory analysis of our specific
sample suggests that in a context where very high levels of volatility and uncertainty in the external environment are associated with
major changes in a company’s internal environment, it could be harder to translate better monitoring, learning, coordination, and
integration capabilities into more efficient and effective operational processes. Such internal turmoil did occur in the telecommuni­
cations company where we collected our data. The company had been undertaking a series of initiatives to cut costs and optimize
resources to respond to the intense economic crisis that the country was experiencing. The measures included changes in its hierar­
chical structure and internal processes, workforce layoffs, and outsourcing. Such changes were affecting the various areas of the
company to different degrees, including those in the Retail Department: areas operating in more volatile and uncertain environments
(more strongly affected by the economic crisis) tended to face more intense internal changes; areas operating in more stable envi­
ronments (less affected by the crisis) were less affected by the internal changes. In this way, groups that reported higher levels of
turbulence would be facing greater difficulties in transforming the strengthening of dynamic capability into operational marketing
capability gains, as they probably lacked the appropriate organizational resources to improve their marketing processes and skills.
Therefore, we suggest that new studies should be conducted to clarify whether the moderating effects predicted in the Dynamic
Capabilities Theory (Helfat et al., 2007; Teece, 2014; Teece et al., 1997) materialize in emerging economies in ways that are similar to
those in developed countries, where there is undoubtedly greater economic stability. These studies could focus on other sectors of the
economy and rely on richer data. For example, in-depth and longitudinal qualitative studies could reveal characteristics of the value
creation process related to BI&A that are peculiar to a specific national context. In the case of quantitative research, it would also be
important to carry out new assessments of the measurement scales of the constructs, especially for environmental turbulence.
From the managerial point of view, the study contributes to elucidating how BI&A investments can generate business value. The
clarification of this mechanism is vital in the current scenario, where BI&A resources and capabilities have become critical to business
strategy and require more frequent investments. Such needs are sometimes difficult to defend in the corporate environment, given that
many of the benefits of BI&A solutions are considered intangible. We have obtained data that empirically support the pathways
through which investments in BI&A generate business value, therefore providing arguments to inform the decision-making processes
associated with such initiatives. The results presented here suggest, for example, that to evaluate the benefits that a company has
obtained using BI&A, one must begin by analyzing the company’s capability to monitor their external environment, to obtain,
internalize and share new knowledge, and to coordinate the development and reallocation of organizational resources and capabilities.
The mediating role of dynamic capabilities, which was proposed and verified in this research, indicates that improvements in its
component capabilities should precede improvements in a company’s operational capabilities. This way, the evaluation of BI&A return
on investment may be affected by the lag between the introduction of new BI&A systems and the generation of value for the business
(Trieu, 2017). Also, the model proposed in this study indicates where one’s focus should be when assessing a BI&A project’s results;
namely, the dimensions of a company’s dynamic capabilities and operational capabilities that contribute to organizational perfor­
mance. Different performance indicators may be used as outcomes. Simultaneously, and complementarily, companies should map
changes in operational processes that have been leveraged by more and better information and capabilities provided by new BI&A
resources.
Furthermore, we suggest that future studies expand the scope of the proposed model given that the relationship between BI&A
investments and organizational performance has not yet been fully clarified. To this end, we suggest that researchers consider the
different aspects of performance (e.g., goal achievement, customer and stakeholder satisfaction, financial and operating results). As
already mentioned, researchers can conduct longitudinal, qualitative studies, as well as quantitative studies with measurement scales
validated in the context of emerging economies. In both cases, we recommend that special attention be given to operational marketing
capabilities, which have an important influence on the achievement of business objectives and competitiveness (Cavusgil et al., 2007;
Homburg, Grozdanovic and Klarmann, 2007). This will contribute not only to better understanding the benefits of Business Intelli­
gence and Analytics systems, but also expand scientific knowledge on the generation of value related with the introduction of in­
formation technologies in organizations – a gap that remains in the IS literature (Peffers & Santos, 2013, Sabherwal & Jeyaraj, 2015,
Schryen, 2013).

Acknowledgements

Flávia Cavazotte gratefully acknowledges the support received from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological
Development (CNPq) – Research Grant 307186/2018-0 (Productivity in Research).

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