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Management research has increasingly recognized data as a critical organizational resource, yet its precise theoretical status remains fragmented across competing scholarly traditions. This narrative review examines how the literature conceptualizes data’s role in strategy, capability development, and competitive advantage, focusing on the transition from raw data to strategic value. We synthesize key theoretical perspectives, including the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, information processing theory, and organizational learning, to analyze how data is positioned as a resource, a capability input, and an infrastructural condition. The review identifies three central themes: the conceptual progression from data to strategic value, the organizational enablers of data-driven capability, and persistent theoretical ambiguities regarding data’s ontological status. We argue that data’s strategic value is neither inherent nor automatic but emerges through complex processes of governance, interpretation, and integration with organizational routines. The analysis highlights unresolved debates about whether data constitutes a primary resource, a foundational capability, or a dynamic asset whose value is contingent on context. This review offers a synthesized framework to guide future research on data-centric strategy and informs managerial understanding of the organizational conditions required to convert data into sustainable competitive advantage.