Author ORCID Identifier
Paidi O’Raghallaigh: 0000-0003-2056-9854
Abstract
For decades, the slogan “data is the new oil” has shaped digital transformation, reinforcing a naïve solutionist logic that accumulating data and deploying advanced analytics will inherently improve performance. Recent crises have exposed the limits of this “data-will-fix-it” assumption, showing how technical fixations can distract from deeper organizational, structural, and institutional reform. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 15 industry-facing data experts, including authors, consultants, executives, and policy advisors, and a multi-stage discourse analysis, this study examines how expert advice is being reframed. The findings show that experts are distancing themselves from naïve solutionism by emphasizing value-driven strategy, stronger governance, data literacy, quality-first management, privacy-by-design, and human-centered AI. However, these prescriptions often reconfigure rather than replace solutionist assumptions, creating the risk that expert advice may unintentionally institutionalize narrow definitions of value, internalized accountability, and corporate self-regulation. We conceptualize this as neo-solutionism and identify limited but important post-solutionist moves where expert discourse problematizes these assumptions. For practitioners, the paper offers a reflexive stress-test for assessing the assumptions, responsibilities, and trade-offs embedded in data “best practices” before they are built into strategy, governance, or AI initiatives.
Recommended Citation
O’Raghallaigh, P. (In press). From Naïve Solutionism to Neo-Solutionism: How Global Data Experts Reframe Data-Driven Transformation. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 59, pp-pp. Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol59/iss1/11
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