Universities Handbook of Switzerland

The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is a non profit business school located in Lausanne, Switzerland. MD was formed in January 1990 through the merger of independent management education centers International Management Institute (Geneva) (IMI), established in 1946 by Alcan, and Institut pour l'Etude des Methodes de Direction de l'Entreprise (IMEDE) Lausanne established in 1957 by Nestl. The new organization settled in Lausanne. Its industrial heritage sets it apart from the other leading business schools, which are all university-affiliated. IMD is set up as a business school that solely provides executive education; it is determinedly not part of a university and there are no academic departments, but just one integrated multidisciplinary faculty. The professors do not have permanent academic tenure, but work under one year contracts and a performance based pay package. The faculty consists of 60 full-time members, made up of 22 different nationalities. The current President is John. R. Wells. His predecessor Peter Lorange, who ran the school from 1993 till 2008, has been widely credited with having established the institute as one of the world's leading business schools