AIS Indonesia Chapter (AISINDO) Hosts First Accounting IS Symposium

The Indonesian chapter of the Association for Information Systems — locally branded AISINDO — convened a two-day symposium dedicated specifically to accounting information systems (AIS) research at the Faculty of Economics and Business of Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya in late November 2023. While the chapter has run more modest member meetings in previous years, the 2023 edition is being treated by chapter leadership as the first full-format annual symposium under the new programmatic structure.

Format and scope

The symposium ran across two working days with parallel paper sessions, plenary keynotes, a doctoral consortium, and an end-of-day reception that doubled as the chapter's annual general meeting for members in attendance. Registered attendance was reported by the organizing committee at just over one hundred participants, with the majority drawn from Indonesian universities and a meaningful minority from institutions elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Paper sessions were grouped around four thematic clusters:

• AIS curriculum and pedagogy in Indonesian business schools
• Digital transformation and ERP adoption in Indonesian SMEs
• Financial reporting systems, audit data analytics, and internal control
• Emerging topics including blockchain in accounting and AI-assisted decision support

Doctoral consortium

One of the more substantive components of the program was a half-day doctoral consortium held in parallel with the second day's main paper track. Approximately a dozen PhD candidates presented work in progress to mixed panels of Indonesian senior faculty and a small number of visiting international discussants. Topics ranged from ERP adoption studies in regional Indonesian government units to applied work on process mining for internal audit.

For early-career researchers, this kind of slow, mentor-dense format is precisely what national chapter symposia do best — and what is hardest to find at larger international conferences where reviewer attention is necessarily thinly spread.

Why it matters

The 2023 AISINDO symposium matters less for any single paper presented than for what it signals about the chapter's institutional trajectory. A national AIS chapter that can sustain a serious annual symposium — with a real doctoral consortium, accepted papers from across the region, and a stable host institution — is one that has moved past the founding phase into the consolidation phase. That is a non-trivial milestone, and one that quite a few AIS chapters globally have struggled to reach.

"What we are trying to build is not a one-off event but an annual rhythm — somewhere Indonesian AIS researchers know they will be heard, and where doctoral students can plan to present each year of their candidacy."

A 2024 edition has been signalled by chapter leadership, with venue details expected to be announced in the first half of the year. The current symposium proceedings and program details are maintained on the chapter's own event site.