ABSTRACT
Organizations have increasing access to large and complex datasets that provide critical information about their employees and their organization and they are making increasing use of these sources of “big data” to make important decisions about individuals and organizational practices. Data from Human Resource Information Systems, organizational databases (e.g., communication logs), operational databases, sensor-generated data, data from vendors, and public databases are all being used by organizations to support human resource management functions, such as selection, training and development, performance management and other processes. These same sources of data are extremely valuable for researchers. Big datasets provide unique and valuable opportunities for research as well as important challenges, including questions about what the measures obtained from these sources mean, about the replication and reproducibility of results from the analysis of this type of data, about the ways these data can be used to support causal inferences and theory-building, and about the rigor, relevance, and reporting of the analyses of big data. This chapter examines both the challenges and the opportunities big data presents to organizational researchers and illustrates the research use of big data with three case studies.
