Rongen (Sophia) Zhang

Rongen (Sophia) Zhang

Assistant Professor of Business Analytics

Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University

I study how emerging technologies — from blockchain and decentralized governance to explainable AI — shape the way people make decisions and engage with digital platforms.

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About

Biography

Rongen (Sophia) Zhang is an assistant professor in the Information Systems and Business Analytics Department at Baylor University. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems at Georgia State University.

Her research examines how emerging technologies shape individual decision-making, with a focus on decentralized governance, AI explainability, generative AI delegation, and technology-mediated user engagement. Her work has been published in respected outlets such as Information Systems Journal, Journal of Medical Internet Research, ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, and Frontiers in Neuroscience. She has been recognized with the Best Associate Editor and Best Reviewer awards at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

Though she strives to explore emerging phenomena with a methodology-agnostic view, her ongoing projects adopt experiments, econometric analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and case study approaches.

She values teaching as an opportunity to inspire and support students' success as wholesome individuals through engaging learning experiences.

Organizational and behavioral implications of emerging technologies, including but not limited to decentralized governance and artificial intelligence (AI); for example, issues related to governance engagement, decentralization, incentives, engagement behaviors, and explainable AI. Methodologies adopted include econometrics, experiments, and qualitative comparative analyses.

Research

Research Streams

Decentralized Governance

This stream combines fsQCA and econometric analyses to uncover how platform design choices interact to produce distinct patterns of governance participation; how cryptocurrency incentive structures interact with portfolio power and status to influence user governance engagement; and how multi-dimensional decentralization shapes governance participation and long-term platform value. The work links practical design guidance for platform architects, drawing on theories of decentralization, commons governance, and value co-creation.

Explainable & Responsible AI

This stream examines how the type of AI explanation influences algorithm aversion and decision-making, particularly in healthcare contexts. Work in progress probes AI delegation, AI quasi-rationality, and AI affordances for cultural intelligence.

Technology, Emotion & Well-being

A third line of work examines the impact of technology on emotion and well-being, including configurational analyses of technology engagement across ecological layers and the role of emotion in information security behaviors.

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Teaching

Courses

MIS 4344 / 5342 — Business Intelligence

Baylor University

Business Intelligence (BI) is the discovery of patterns and relationships hidden in large amounts of data. This hands-on course provides practical analytical skills that apply in almost any workplace, exploring techniques for making intelligent business decisions in data-rich organizations. Students learn the basics of data manipulation, exploratory visualization, and common analytical algorithms using the R programming language to analyze real data sets and inform strategic and operational decisions.

CIS 4730 — Unstructured Data Management

Georgia State University

Over 90 percent of digital data is unstructured — much of it locked away across varied data stores, locations, and formats. This course discusses the issues and challenges of unstructured data management, and introduces best practices, underlying principles, and emerging technologies for storing, retrieving, and analyzing unstructured data.

Education

Education

  • Georgia State University, J. Mack Robinson College of BusinessAtlanta, GAPh.D. Computer Information SystemsAugust 2022
  • Harbin Institute of TechnologyHarbin, ChinaB.S. Management Information SystemsJuly 2018
  • Technical University of HamburgHamburg, GermanyInternational Management Science; Exchange ProgramAugust 2017

Recognition

Awards & Honors

  • 2025 – Dean’s Excellence Grant
  • 2024 – Best Associate Editor for International Conference of Information Systems
  • 2023 – Best Reviewer for International Conference of Information Systems
  • 2023 – Hankamer UGRA Research Funding
  • 2021 – Georgia State University Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award
  • 2021 – George E. Manners Scholarship
  • 2021 – Georgia State University Provost's Dissertation Fellowship
  • 2021 – AIS Doctoral Student Service Award
  • 2018-2022 – Second Century Initiative & Doctoral Fellowships, Georgia State University
  • April 2017 – Government Full Scholarship for Overseas Semester in Germany (The only student to qualify from the Harbin Institute of Technology)
  • November 2014 – National People Scholarship for three consecutive years
  • June 2014 – Ranked among the top 0.5% in the National College Entrance Examination

Service

Professional Service

University Service

  • Faculty Advisor, Blockchain Collaborative, Baylor University, 2023–2024

Invited Panels

  • Panelist: Faculty Perspective Panel; First in Line Success Academy, Baylor University, August 2024
  • Panelist: Facebook Libra Panel Discussion; 3rd World Digital Economy Conference in Beijing, China, June 2019

Invited Speaker

  • GSU Honors College Research Method Workshop, Georgia State University, September 2021
  • The 18th Beijing International Consumer Electronics Exposition; 3rd World Digital Economy Conference in Beijing, China, June 2019

Graduate Student Thesis Committee

  • Razwan Tanvir, M.S. in Computer Science (Committee Member, Completed 2024)
  • Thesis: Repository Blockchain for Collaborative Blockchain Ecosystem
  • Scott Morgan, Ph.D. Candidate in Business Intelligence (External Committee Member)
  • Dissertation: Enhancing Developer Productivity: Assessing the Impact of Generative AI-Powered Development Tools on Code-Exploration

Invited Reviewer

  • MIS Quarterly
  • Management Science
  • Decision Support System
  • European Journal of Information Systems
  • Information Systems Journal
  • Journal of Association of Information Systems
  • Journal of Medical Internet Research
  • Transactions of Management Information Systems
  • AI Ethics
  • Journal of Engineering and Technology Management
  • International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
  • Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2022, 2023, 2024)
  • European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2022, 2024)
  • Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2021, 2022, 2024)
  • Hawaiian Conference on Information Systems (HICSS 2025, 2026)
  • China Summer Workshop on Information Management (CSWIM 2023)
  • Conference on Information Systems Technology (2025)

Associate Editor

  • International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2024, 2025)
  • Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2023)
  • Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2024)

Board Member

  • Secretary of AIS Doctoral Student College 2021 Executive Board
  • Vice President of Georgia State University (GSU) Robinson PhD Fellows 2020 Executive Board

Coordinator

  • MISQ Insider, 2022-2023
  • Dan Robey’s Workshop, 2021-2022

Volunteer

  • Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2021)
  • International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018, 2019)
  • 2018 Board Meeting of Confucius Institute at Georgia State University (Interpreter)

Contact

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

— Helen Keller

Email me
Sophia_Zhang@baylor.edu LinkedIn Baylor Profile