FAIRR Research Seminar with Alessandro Ghio (ESCP Business School Paris, France)

Place : Grand Paris Campus
Time : 10:30AM - 12:00PM 
Speaker : Alessandro Ghio (ESCP Business School Paris, France)

Biography : Alessandro Ghio is an Associate Professor in the Performance Measurement and Management Department at ESCP Business School (Paris, France). Their research focuses on diversity in the professions (sexuality, gender, and age) and corporate social media communication.
Their work appears in leading journals, including Contemporary Accounting Research and Journal of Business Ethics, and they have co-authored three books. Alessandro is an editor of Accounting Horizons and serves on multiple editorial boards. They are also a member of the Financial Reporting Advisory Committee at Québec’s Financial Market Authority.
A recipient of the 2019 Global Award 'Ideas Worth Teaching' (Aspen Institute, NYC), Alessandro is committed to academic activism. They co-instigated the projects "Queering Accounting" and "Working Women and Wellbeing".”

Abstract : This paper questions whether we can still trust qualitative research in light of the spread and adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). On the one hand, qualitative researchers are increasingly drawn to GAI’s potential to reduce the time required for data analysis (and possibly data collection) by outsourcing these tasks to GAI, ultimately enhancing their much-sought-after research productivity. On the other hand, as a scientific community, we are facing growing challenges to the legitimacy of our claims. To unpack this perfect storm, we draw on Oreskes’ (2019) five pillars of scientific knowledge, namely evidence, method, values, humility, and consensus. Through our examination of the potential, probable or actual use of ChatGPT as applied to qualitative organizational research, we highlight the risks of GAI dehumanizing qualitative research, dequalifying scholars from interpreting data, and undermining their ability to critically evaluate claims as an epistemic community. We also argue that the proliferation of GAI use is pushing qualitative research toward the appearance of quantitative rigor to appear more ‘objective and scientific,’ but at the risk of ultimately further undermining its trustworthiness. We conclude by offering suggestions for implementing ethical practices and accountability guardrails in qualitative organizational research to address these risks.