Keynote Speaker: Yves Gendron (Université Laval)

On the role of Positioning and Theorizing in Qualitative Research

Yves Gendron is Full Professor of Accounting at Université Laval, in Québec City. Yves is highly committed to qualitative research. One of his main endeavors as qualitative researcher is to better understand key features of public accountants’ daily lives, such as how they make decisions in action or how they go through difficult and stressful situations. Yves is also interested in legitimization processes surrounding public accountants’ claims to expertise, seeking to comprehend how public accountants attempted to establish their presence in the jurisdictions of performance measurement, online auditing, and consulting. As such, his research in the area has contributed to the development of a social critique regarding the extent of commercialism within the field of public accounting. Yves has also studied corporate governance processes within public companies, focusing on the role of audit committees and that of compensation committees. He also carried out several epistemological studies, having examined objects such as the relationship between research and practice, the birth of the interpretive paradigm of accounting research, and the extent of performativity pressures in contemporary academia. Yves’ academic work has been published in a variety of journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society; Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory; Critical Perspectives on Accounting; Contemporary Accounting Research; European Accounting Review, Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies. He is currently Co-Editor in Chief of Critical Perspectives on Accounting.