About

Tim Quigley

PROFESSOR OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE · IMD LAUSANNE

Tim Quigley is Professor of Strategic Leadership and Governance at IMD, Lausanne. His primary interest is in corporate governance with a particular focus on CEO succession and how CEO characteristics — including prior experiences, values, and compensation — shape organizational outcomes.

As a management educator, Quigley equips leaders to make well-informed decisions in demanding and rapidly evolving environments. He emphasizes the impact of cognitive blind spots on individual judgment and explores how an organization’s culture around information and decision processes can either support or hinder enterprise-wide decision efficiency and corporate success.

He also focuses on the essential conceptual frameworks and statistical methods that support sound decision-making, providing leaders with a robust understanding of both theoretical and practical aspects of data analysis.

“CEOs and top managers matter today more than ever — not because they act alone, but because they shape the environment in which others thrive or stumble. A leader’s impact depends on decisions grounded in context, a clear engagement with uncertainty, and the discipline to confront the assumptions and blind spots that subtly shape their choices.”

RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP

Quigley’s research sheds light on the forces that shape executive impact — how markets respond to diverse leadership appointments, how boards gauge executive talent through initial compensation decisions, and how insider–outsider succession represents a strategic choice between stability and risk. His work has been published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science, and covered by BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, and The Washington Post.

He has served as a reviewer for several leading management publications and as Associate Editor for Strategic Management Journal from 2020 through 2025. A frequent keynote speaker and panelist at conferences and management events, Quigley is also a Mercator Fellow at the University of Passau, Germany.

BACKGROUND

Before IMD, Quigley was the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Management at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business. He began his academic career at Lehigh University, and holds a PhD and MBA from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business.

He came to academia after a career in nonprofit, IT, and consulting. Before that, he was a multiple-time US national cycling champion and an alternate for the 1992 US Olympic cycling team.