Senior Managers and Data Analytics: Exploring Expectations of Organizations

Although there is a consensus that senior managers, particularly those responsible for IT, are key to ensuring the successful implementation of data analytics initiatives, we know little about what this looks like in terms of their responsibilities and roles. We explore: What do organizations expect from senior IT managers when it comes to data analytics? We collect job ads for senior IT managers with varying titles and apply topic modeling to analyze the contents. We identify four themes that represent the data analytics-related responsibilities of these managers: “data infrastructure”, “data control”, “applied analytics”, and “privacy”. We explore how dedicated IT managers are to data analytics and what themes they typically focus on. We find that organizations tend to create new, dedicated senior manager positions for data analytics, rather than adding data analytics-related responsibilities to existing senior manager roles. This suggests that organizations are taking the phenomenon seriously and might be adopting data analytics at the level of strategy. We also find that most senior IT managers focus on applied analytics, while the ethical implications hereof are seemingly low on their agendas. This makes us question to what extent ethical considerations are embedded in existing processes of data-driven value creation.