Tim Quigley
Tim Quigley is Professor of Strategic Leadership and Governance. His primary interest is in corporate governance with a particular focus on strategic management and the role of CEOs, CEO succession, and how their impact is influenced by prior experiences, values, compensation, and other factors.
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.
Additionally, he 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.”
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 widely published in a range of outlets, including Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science, and it has been covered in media outlets such as BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, and The Washington Post.
He has served as a reviewer for several leading management publications and as an associate editor for Strategic Management Journal from 2020 through 2025. A frequent keynote speaker, presenter, and panelist at conferences and management events, Quigley is also a Mercator Fellow at the University of Passau, Germany.
Before joining IMD, he was the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Management at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business, where he taught courses related to strategic management, executive decision-making, and statistics to executive and professional MBAs and PhDs. Following his PhD, Quigley began his academic career as an assistant professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where he taught strategy and international management courses in the MBA program.
Quigley came to academia after a successful corporate career in nonprofit, IT, and consulting roles. During the rapid growth of the web in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was part of an early-stage technology consulting firm where he helped companies across several industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, and consumer products, leverage emerging technologies to engage customers and enhance workforce productivity. Before embarking on his professional career, he was a multiple-time US national cycling champion and an alternate for the 1992 US Olympic cycling team.