Permeation of the term “analytics” in production and operations management research

Abstract

This is an exploratory study to analyze the permeation of the term/word “analytics” in the operations management domain by reviewing 2175 papers published in the Production and Operations Management journal (POMJ) since its inception in the winter 1992 until the summer of 2022. We identify the words that commonly precede the term “analytics” in these papers. We also identify the most common words that appear in the research papers in which the term “analytics” has appeared. This analysis allows us to reflect on the contexts in which analytics studies have focused and the influence they might exert in future studies. Results show that the usage of the term “analytics” has increased from less than 2% of articles published in POMJ during the period (2007–2016) to about 1 out of every 10 articles published from 2020 to the summer of 2022.

Emerging research problems in different business domains: An analytics perspective

“…Research in “analytics” is increasing, as presented by S. Gupta et al. (2022). The other research papers focus on organizational culture, restaurant analytics, retail analytics, smart U, and the study of the problem of bias in business analytics through the emerging field of “algorithmic fairness.” The research arena in “analytics” is wide open, and researchers can work in many other application areas, for example, agri‐business, aviation, disaster management, elections, energy, forest fires, health care, and sports.…”

“…Gupta et al. (2022) asses the permeation of the term “analytics” in the POM discipline and contend that usage of this term (when considering 5‐year moving averages) has increased from less than 2% of articles published in POM journal (from 2007 to 2016 to about one out of every 10 articles published from 2020 to summer of 2022. They also observed that from 2007 to 2017, the most commonly used terms in papers in which the term “analytics” was used were “customer” and “product.” In 2018, healthcare‐related terms were the most prominent.…”

“…In this regard, S. Gupta et al. (2022) posit that, as new models and algorithms are developed, studies on updating real‐time demand will continue to be conducted and published. Also, in the near future, supply chain and healthcare analytics studies ought to remain prominent.…”

“…In fact, a paper in this special issue by S. Gupta et al. (2022) posits that the number of articles alluding to the term “analytics” is undergoing rapid growth in the production and operations management (POM) discipline.…”