Interdisciplinary Perspectives SIG Plenary Session 2022

The Interdisciplinary Perspectives Special Interest Group (IPSIG) will be holding a free virtual Plenary Session on "the superficialization of policy-making in the aftermath of Covid-19" on 15 September 2022 on 13:00-14:30 (BST).

The session examines how media discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic both reflected and helped to diffuse conduits of superficialization in society. I define superficialization as the process through which people’s reflexivity is gradually constrained, reduced, and numbed. Specifically, I aim to see how thoughts expressed in the media on the pandemic were often incapable of questioning the ascendancy of neoliberalism on public health policies – even though the crisis could have provided a genuine opportunity for citizens to reflect on the role of neoliberalism in constraining public resources devoted to public health agencies, in privatising the development of vaccines, and in offshoring the production of medical protective equipment. The presentation will be followed by an interactive discussion and Q&A.

Speaker

Yves Gendron is Professor of Accounting at Université Laval, Québec City. Yves is highly committed to qualitative research in which one main endeavour is to better understand key features of public accountants’ daily lives, such as how they make decisions in action or how they navigate through difficult and stressful situations. Yves is also interested in legitimisation processes surrounding public accountants’ claims to expertise, seeking to comprehend how public accountants attempt to establish their presence in the jurisdictions of performance measurement, online auditing, and consulting. As such, his research in this 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. In 2019, the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA) awarded Yves the Haim Falk Award for Distinguished Contribution to Accounting Thought.

Yves’ academic work has been published in a variety of journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society; Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory; Contemporary Accounting Research; European Accounting Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies. He is currently Co-Editor of Critical Perspectives on Accounting, and Associate Editor at Contemporary Accounting Research.

A recording of the plenary can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rQKPwoic5c&ab_channel=BAFAInterdisciplinaryPerspectivesSIG