Using the BRICS People-to-People Exchange and Cultural Indigenous Management to Extract Value from the Big Data Environment

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19627491

Garikayi Emmanuel Gondo¹, Lorna B Holtman², and Ravinder Rena³ (UNISA School of Business Leadership (SBL), University of South Africa (UNISA), Midrand, South Africa¹, Honorary Research Fellow, International Education and Partnerships, Durban University of Technology, Republic of South Africa², and DUT Business School, Faculty of Management Sciences, Durban University of Technology, Republic of South Africa³)

Governments within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, & South Africa) grouping should build on existing relationships among themselves to develop laws that promote the sharing and exchange of data using Indigenous management concepts so that communities can extract value from their Indigenous big data environment. Big data has the potential to change the whole world; however, the adoption of big data practices and data usage is centered more on cultural exchange than on technology. The problem is that big data is being approached based on available data stocks (volume) instead of looking for specific, valuable data needed in operations. This topic should be approached using BRICS people-to-people exchange and cultural Indigenous management concepts such as guanxi (China), jugaad (India), blat (Russia), and ubuntu (South Africa) that are built on personal relations and organisation relations to exchange favours. This is the key needed to extract value from data in this fifth industrial revolution. This paper explores how countries within BRICS, which have unique histories and practices of conducting business as indigenous groupings, can use the BRICS people-to-people exchange cultural principle to extract value from their own data. A case study and purposive sampling were used to investigate the problem. A localised study comprising 23 participants and a focus group was conducted. What emerged is that there are no clear frameworks and a lack of relevant skills to exploit opportunities in the current big data environment. A framework to overcome this challenge and exploit opportunities was produced from this study. It is now time to have a big data value extraction license for countries within BRICS.