Desautels Faculty of Management

AI-powered HR portals promise efficiency, but adoption still comes down to people.

Simon Blanchette, adjunct lecturer at McGill University, argues that technology alone can't improve efficiency. Successful AI rollout requires purposeful planning, clear guidelines and employee training before any system goes live.

"The human in the loop is only as good as how well-trained the humans are," Blanchette says, stressing that employees need clear recourse when AI produces harmful or inaccurate information. He also cautions that self-service tools should never replace leadership responsibilities: organizations should test AI through pilot projects, build trust and keep human oversight firmly in place.

For Blanchette, effective AI adoption stays focused on one thing above all: people. https://www.mcgill.ca/x/56K

AI stocks are driving strong market gains, but La Caisse (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) isn't chasing the trend.

Sebastien Betermier, associate professor of finance at McGill Desautels, explains that La Caisse maintains a diversified portfolio, blending public equities with infrastructure, real estate and private assets, to protect the long-term retirement savings of millions of Quebecers through changing market cycles.

While one asset class will always outperform others at any given moment, predicting market movements remains difficult. Betermier notes that recent stock returns are unusually concentrated among a small group of technology companies, making heavier exposure to that group potentially risky, even amid the current enthusiasm around AI. https://www.mcgill.ca/x/56V

When an online argument turns heated, the instinct is to assume it's tearing a movement apart.

New research from McGill Desautels' Emmanuelle Vaast, Professor of Information Systems and Vice-Dean of Research, suggest the opposite may be true. Examining nearly 1.9 million posts related to the 2019 global climate strikes, the study found that social media can bring distinct movements into conversation with one another, letting them work through disagreement and eventually unite around shared goals.

"Conflict did not weaken the movement," Vaast said. "Co-operation and disagreement evolved together."

The findings challenge the assumption that heated debate undermines collective action, showing instead how online exchanges can help diverse groups build common ground and mobilize globally. https://www.mcgill.ca/x/56z

As generative AI becomes more embedded in everyday life, three new studies from McGill Desautels explore its effects on people, platforms and markets.

Professor Elizabeth Han's research finds that empathetic customer service chatbots can backfire, triggering psychological reactance rather than reassurance after a service failure. Professors Sameer Borwankar and Warut Khern-am-nuai uncover a similar trade-off in online communities: when Stack Overflow restricted ChatGPT-generated content, the quality of human contributions rose, but participation shrank. And findings from the research of PhD student Jitsama Tanlamai, with professors Khern-am-nuai and Maxime Cohen, show that AI-generated housing prices can narrow long-standing pricing gaps between white-dominant and minority-dominant neighbourhoods by 8.7%, even if bias isn't fully eliminated.

Read more about their research: https://www.mcgill.ca/x/52j

The Analytics, Advanced Digital Technologies and AI (AAAI) Initiative supports research, teaching and industry collaboration on AI, analytics and advanced digital technologies at the Desautels Faculty of Management.

Congratulations to Emilien Trottier and Mariam Khedr, GCPA'26 students, on being named this year's recipients of the C. Douglas Mellor Prize for Academic Excellence!

The prize recognizes the top students overall in their graduating class for outstanding academic achievement, named in honour of Douglas Mellor, first Executive Director of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Quebec (now the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec).

Bravo Emilien and Mariam! https://www.mcgill.ca/x/52P

Return-to-office mandates remain contentious as employers and workers debate productivity, collaboration and flexibility. Jean-Nicolas Reyt, associate professor of organizational behaviour at McGill Desautels, joined Ian Hanomansing on CBC's Cross Country Checkup to explain why hybrid employees are equally or more productive, while turnover can decline by 30 per cent.

Reyt argues that office presence is an unreliable measure of performance. Employees can appear busy without producing meaningful results, regardless of location. Successful hybrid workplaces, he explains, provide structure, clear expectations and appropriate monitoring while allowing employees to maintain boundaries between their professional and personal responsibilities.

Listen here: https://www.mcgill.ca/x/52c

When a safety test becomes a real cyberattack, who is responsible?

An OpenAI cybersecurity test crossed into the real world when AI models escaped a controlled environment and accessed Hugging Face's production systems. Simon Blanchette, faculty lecturer at McGill Desautels, argues the incident exposes a major gap in AI governance: safety evaluations can transfer risk to third parties that never consented to participate.

While a proposed U.S. "kill switch" could stop dangerous models, Blanchette warns that developers must first be able to detect when a system has escaped its constraints. As AI agents become more autonomous, he argues companies cannot remain solely responsible for designing tests, judging failures and determining the consequences.

Read more: https://www.mcgill.ca/x/52q

Defined benefit or defined contribution: the difference comes down to who carries the risk.

Sebastien Betermier, associate professor of finance, breaks down what sets Canada's two main workplace pension plans apart. Defined benefit plans guarantee employees a predetermined income throughout retirement, with employers assuming the investment and longevity risk. "A defined benefit plan offers greater financial security for employees because it provides a stable, lifelong source of income," Betermier explains.

Defined contribution plans work differently. Retirement income depends on investment performance and how long savings last, but these plans offer more flexibility and portability, which can suit employees who change jobs often.

Read more: https://www.mcgill.ca/x/52S

Job security. Housing costs. Rising prices. As Canadians grapple with economic uncertainty, Robert Nason, associate professor and director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at McGill Desautels, joined CBC's The Current with Matt Galloway to make the case for a different mindset: opportunity.
Rather than taking a wait-and-see approach, Nason encourages organizations to treat uncertainty as an opportunity for experimenting, diversifying suppliers and exploring new markets to identify growth while limiting risk. https://www.mcgill.ca/x/58A

Governments across Canada, Europe and Asia are calling on pension funds to invest more at home. According to Professor Sébastien Betermier, the approach matters as much as the ask.

Speaking at the Canadian Investment Review's Global Investment Conference 2026, Betermier, also Executive Director of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM), cautioned that mandating domestic investment carries real risks: lower returns, greater portfolio distortion and erosion of the independence pension committees depend on.

The more effective path, Betermier argues, is expanding the range of attractive domestic opportunities including assets that are operational, well-governed and sizable enough to justify due diligence, and pairing them with policy incentives that allow funds to invest at home without compromising their fiduciary mandate. https://mcgill.ca/x/57M