147 Big Data Analytics and Organizational Performance: A Meta-Analysis Study Mihai BOGDAN 1,* Anca BORZA 2 ABSTRACT Big data analytics gained a great deal of attention from both, the business world and the academia. Investments of time, capital and personnel are significant, to the level that pioneers of this field reached a point of no return. Although there are clear insights of successful companies built on a big data analytics strategy, the results from the researchers’ work show mixed outcomes. It is not explicit under which circumstances big data analytics adoption leads to positive results. The purpose of this study is to run a meta-analysis review on the empirical articles that tackle big data analytics and organizational performance topics. As a methodology, we searched all the articles indexed on ISI Web of Knowledge during period January 2010 – May 2019. After the first filter, we selected 375, out of which we included only those studies which respected our full criteria: empirical study, provided results, at least one effect size and measurement error displayed. Based on this standard, we included 37 articles in our meta-analysis. The findings confirm that big data analytics play an important role in organizational performance. Finally, implications for practice are discussed, and future research directions are proposed considering the limitations of our study. KEYWORDS: big data analytics, organizational performance, meta-analysis JEL CLASSIFICATION: M15, O32 1.INTRODUCTION “Data is the new oil”, this is a very common headline from many business newspapers (e.g. The Economist, Medium, Hackermoon etc.). This metaphorically association seems quite right if we think that it highlights many of the similarities between these two, otherwise totally different elements. Firstly, it sends to the idea of the huge economic importance as a resource which both elements possess. Then, like oil, data needs to be “mined” and refined in order to obtain a valuable finished product. Also, the idea that data can be sold as a commodity, so it is not mandatory that the ones that produce it should use it. Even those who wrote articles arguing why “data is not the new oil” somehow just reinforce the idea. If data is going to be a critical value in the future, then the next question is to what extend is big data analytics valuable for an organization. Similar with the emergence of internet in the 90s where many researchers rushed in to argue that there is a clear connection between investments in IT infrastructure and organizational performance, there are many specialists that already drew the conclusion that investing into big data analytics is the right path for all organizations (Gupta & George, 2016). 1 Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania, mihai.bogdan@econ.ubbcluj.ro, *Corresponding author 2 Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania, anca.borza@econ.ubbcluj.ro