Business analytics

Track 6

Track chairs

Barbara Dinter
Chemnitz University of Technology

Shijia Gao
Monash University

Patrick Zschech
TUD Dresden University of Technology

Track description

In an era of increasing digital interconnectedness, organisations rely on business analytics (BA) to navigate complexity, enhance decision-making, and create value across organisational, geographic, and societal boundaries. BA encompasses methods, processes, technologies, skills, and organisational capabilities required to analyse past and present data to inform and shape future performance. It is forward-looking and focuses on diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive insights that guide strategic and operational action in dynamic environments.

Aligned with the conference theme “Bridging Digital Borders,” this track explores how BA can connect actors across digital, organisational, and societal boundaries. As digital technologies expand global connectivity, they also introduce fragmentation through data silos, algorithmic decision-making, governance structures, and unequal access to digital resources. BA enables organisations to generate insights that transcend boundaries while raising important questions about inclusion, accessibility, and value distribution. This track invites research that examines how analytics can help bridge digital divides, foster cross-border collaboration, and support equitable participation in digital ecosystems. At the same time, the increasing use of advanced technologies such as generative and agentic AI, digital twins, and data ecosystems reshapes how data is generated, shared, and analysed across borders. These developments create opportunities for integration and innovation but also introduce challenges related to data governance, interoperability, transparency, and accountability.

Recognising that people remain central stakeholders of digital transformation, this track emphasises human-centered and ethically grounded analytics. Bridging digital borders requires careful consideration of fairness, privacy, and societal impact, as well as an understanding of how digital boundaries may privilege some actors while excluding others. Human-machine co-creation remains essential by combining human judgment, contextual awareness, and ethical reasoning with computational capabilities to develop meaningful and responsible insights.

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that examine organisational, technological, cultural, ethical, and societal dimensions of BA. Submissions may draw on quantitative, qualitative, theoretical, design science, action, or behavioral research. In line with the conference theme, we encourage papers that investigate how BA can bridge or critically reflect on digital borders to foster collaboration, inclusiveness, and sustainable value creation. Papers focused solely on AI and machine learning, without a clear link to BA and its broader socio-technical implications, are not the primary focus of this track.

Topics of interest

The role of business analytics and business intelligence in bridging digital borders and shaping digital futures
Human-centered and socially responsible approaches to business analytics
The role of agentic AI systems and generative models in shaping analytics practices
Explainable and interpretable AI for transparent and inclusive decision support
Causal machine learning for prescriptive decision-making
Business analytics for human dignity, social good, empowerment, and digital responsibility
Operational, real-time, and event-driven analytics
Analytics architectures, data ecosystems, and interoperability across digital borders
Process mining and robotic process automation
Data literacy, data humanism, data harm, and the societal impact of datafication
Data visualisation and storytelling, visual analytics
Privacy, data quality, transparency, and governance in cross-border data ecosystems
Data-driven business model innovation, entrepreneurship, and platform ecosystems
Challenges and opportunities in open data and data sharing to overcome borders