•Big data utilization enhances organizational innovation (OI) and corporate social performance (CSP).•Big data positively impacts OI in business practices, workplace organization, and external relations.•All measures of IU have a positive impact on CSP, except OI in workplace organization.•The positive effect of big data on CSP is fully mediated through OI in business practices and external relations. Over the last decade, the use big data in firms has seen a rapid increase. Whilst scholars have begun to unpack the relationship between big data utilisation and financial performance, significant uncertainty exists about the ethical uses of this new asset. Whether firms use big data to improve social performance is a question explored in this study. Relying on organisational learning theory, we hypothesise that firms harness information from big data to improve their corporate social performance (CSP) and that these improvements occur through organisational innovation in business practices, workplace organisation and external relations. To explore this topic, we surveyed 297 North American middle- and senior-level managers familiar with data use in their firms. The results of the structural equation modelling suggest that firms rely on big data to improve CSP. Additional analyses revealed how this relationship is manifested through organisational innovation.