This track explores how artificial intelligence and digital technologies are transforming operations management and supply chain design. It examines the tension between efficiency-driven automation and the ethical imperatives of fair labour practices, environmental sustainability, and supply chain transparency — with a particular focus on how operations leaders can deploy AI purposefully across global and domestic value chains.

Sub Themes
     • Circular economy business models – design for reuse, repair, remanufacture, and recycling
     • ESG measurement, non-financial reporting frameworks, and sustainability assurance
     • AI and digital tools for sustainability monitoring, carbon accounting, and climate risk
     • Corporate social responsibility, stakeholder capitalism, and shared value creation
     • Net-zero strategies, science-based targets, and corporate climate action

This track investigates how AI-powered marketing tools are redefining consumer engagement, personalisation, and brand strategy — while raising profound questions about data privacy, manipulation, and equitable access. It also situates marketing practice within the SDG framework, focusing on responsible consumption and sustainable brand stewardship.

Sub Themes
     • AI, Technology & Responsible Leadership
     • Gen AI and Large Languages Models – applications and organisational implications
     • AI governance, explainability, and responsible AI frameworks for organisations
     • Cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital trust in AI-enabled enterprises
     • Blockchain, IoT, edge computing, and their business implications
     • Ethical decision-making, moral courage, and stakeholder accountability

This track addresses the transformation of financial systems through AI, machine learning, and digital platforms — and the governance challenges these changes create. It covers sustainable finance, ESG investing, algorithmic trading, and the role of financial institutions in advancing or impeding equitable growth.

Sub Themes
     • Lean, agile, and resilient operations in a disrupted global environment
     • AI and automation in production planning, scheduling, and quality control
     • Industry 4.0 – smart manufacturing, IoT, and cyber-physical systems
     • Supply chain resilience – risk management, disruption response, and recovery strategies
     • Sustainable and circular operations

This track examines the profound changes AI and automation are bringing to the employment relationship, talent management, and organisational culture. It focuses on how HR leaders can champion ethical AI adoption, protect worker rights, and build inclusive workplaces in an era of accelerating digital transformation.

Sub Themes
     • AI in marketing – personalisation engines, recommendation systems, and predictive analytics
     • Digital consumer behaviour – social media, influencer marketing, and online communities
     • Ethical marketing and data privacy
     • Sustainable and green marketing
     • Customer experience management in AI-mediated and omnichannel environments

This track investigates how firms are rethinking competitive strategy in AI-enabled environments — balancing productivity and innovation with responsibility and long-term stakeholder value. It covers strategic decision-making under uncertainty, AI-based business model innovation, and the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs and SMEs.

Sub Themes
     • AI in finance: analysis, forecasting, algorithmic trading, risk modelling, plus applications in accounting, auditing, and reporting (including integrity risks)
     • FinTech and digital finance, including AI-driven financial inclusion (credit, insurance, savings access)
     • Sustainable finance: ESG investing, green bonds, impact investing, and TCFD reporting
     • Corporate governance, financial ethics, and behavioural finance

This track addresses the infrastructural, governance, and ethical dimensions of digital transformation. As organisations become increasingly data-driven, questions of privacy, cybersecurity, algorithmic accountability, and digital trust have moved to the centre of management practice.

Sub Themes
     • AI in talent acquisition, performance management, and workforce analytics
     • Future of work: HR analytics, automation, hybrid models, gig economy, and employment relations
     • Diversity, equity, and inclusion: algorithmic bias in HR and building equitable workplaces
     • Employee well-being, mental health, and psychological safety in AI-augmented environments
     • Upskilling, reskilling, and lifelong learning strategies for AI-driven workforce transitions

This track focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, corporate sustainability, and global development goals. It examines how AI can advance environmental and social outcomes while also scrutinising the resource costs and equity implications of AI deployment itself.

Sub Themes
     • Strategic management in the AI era: competitive advantage, disruption, and adaptation
     • Geopolitics and global business: trade tensions, supply chain nationalism, and regulatory fragmentation
     • Corporate sustainability strategy: integrating ESG into business models and competitive positioning
     • Digital transformation strategies: platform economics, data strategy, and ecosystem management
     • Strategic responses of SMEs and family businesses to digital and global disruption

This open track welcomes rigorous interdisciplinary research on management themes that span multiple domains or do not fit neatly within the seven specialist tracks. It is especially suited to research drawing on Indian knowledge systems, global south perspectives, and case-based methodologies.

Sub Themes
     • AI-enabled and responsible entrepreneurship
     • Innovation management and technology commercialisation
     • social entrepreneurship and inclusive business models for SDG aligned impact
     • startup ecosystem, incubators, accelerators and policy frameworks.