Data analytics and performance: The moderating role of intuition-based HR management in major league baseball

We propose that due to the decreased spectrum of available strategies (i.e., social simplicity) and simplified mechanisms of value creation (i.e., causal clarity) associated with a greater reliance on data-driven decisions in highly competitive and specialized industries, the positive effects of social capital for data analytics on firm performance will diminish when firms predominantly adopt data-driven decision-making in deploying human resources. Alternatively, the positive effect associated with social capital in data analytics is more profound when moderated by intuition-based (i.e., idiosyncratic knowledge) decision-making for managing HR selections. To test our hypotheses, we observed 30 major league baseball (MLB) teams over 6 years from 2009 to 2014 as the early phase of the 'big data era' that began as a result of PITCHf/x tracking systems in all MLB stadiums being implemented. Our findings suggest that the introduction of the system to all ballparks and resulting dispersion of specialized human capital across this industry facilitates firm specificity of data analytic knowledge to become generic overtime.