Madness of the Crowd - How Big Data Creates Emotional Markets and What can be Done to Control Behavioural Risk

In the recent years the term Big Data has been vividly discussed in management, the IS community and in the IT departments. Due to its potential for corporate performance and competitive advantage it has gained large attention up into the C-level-management. Observations on the possible negative consequences of living in a data-driven world have mostly been limited to the perspective of an individual. For instance, concerns about data privacy have been vividly discussed when the growing hunger of governmental or private institutions for ever more and more personalized data was made public. This article starts with a critical reflection on the phenomena of Big Data, focusing on the consequences for organizations and decision making. Next a case from the field of risk management is investigated in more detail using behavioural economics. Upon a series of experiments this paper sheds light on the possibility to create emotional markets using Big Data analytics in an un-reflected way. As a key takeaway this article should raise the awareness of behavioural risk. The presented work suggests extending the organizational risk framework by addressing behavioural risk.