Look Beneath the Surface: Reconceptualizing Data Culture

Although data is acknowledged as a strategic asset, many companies still struggle to fully harness its potential. A reported explanation for this failure is poor data culture. Although IS research describes data culture as a key moderating factor for achieving value creation from data, its conceptualization remains inconsistent, scattered across various entities, and exhibits diverse properties. This paper aims to introduce a refined conceptualization of data culture that captures how data's value is actualized in work practices through employees' contextual interpretation and utilization of data. Hence, we conducted a scoping review of data culture literature and analyzed it using Schein's seminal theory on organizational culture. Our findings depict data culture as a subculture within the broader organizational culture, mutually shaped by data artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions about data. Our findings contribute to a rigorous foundation for a data culture construct and inform future scale development.