- IMD Business School
 - IMD Business School
Omar Toulan

Professor of Strategy and International Management, MBA Dean and Hilti Chair

Omar Toulan is Professor of Strategy and International Management, MBA Dean and Hilti Chair. His areas of expertise include strategic management, international business, growth strategies, and managing the multinational. His research – which includes offshoring and outsourcing, global account management, emerging market multinationals, and the impact of the digital disruption on the retail sector – has appeared in a variety of academic and practitioner oriented journals, including Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, California Management Review, Industrial and Corporate Change, Emerging Markets Review, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.

Before joining IMD, he spent two decades at McGill University in Canada where he was a tenured professor and served as Associate Dean of Academic and Master’s Programs of the business school, overseeing all faculty and leading the introduction and redesign of a number of programs. He also spent time as a visiting professor at London Business School, INSEAD, Imperial College, Stockholm School of Economics, and Universidad Torcuato di Tella. Toulan has been awarded various research and teaching grants, including a Teaching Chair from the Quebec Government, and has given executive seminars extensively – not only in Europe and North America, but also in Latin America and Japan.

Prior to entering academia, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company in its New York office and its Global Institute in Washington, DC. He also worked as a researcher at the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Toulan received his undergraduate degree in international economics from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and went on to complete his PhD in strategy at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Academic publications
Insight for Executives
Article
German firms: open borders, closed boardrooms : How many foreigners are in Germany’s top executive positions?

With the impending exit of Great Britain from the European Union in 2019, German firms will likely assume an even greater position within the trading block. Given its reputation as the largest expo...

Board Strategy
17 September 2018
Article
How high streets and shopping malls face a domino effect from major store closures

Traditional retail is in the center of a storm – and British department store chain House of Fraser is the latest to succumb to the tempest. The company plans to close 31 of its 59 shops – includin...

Strategy
8 June 2018
Article
How global are Germany's largest corporations?

Whereas facts suggest that German companies are among the best equipped and most active to pursue global growth, they offer limited insight to determine the real extent to which these companies are...

Global Business
1 May 2018
Article
The irony of Brexit lies in the data

Can it be certain that bilateral agreements negotiated post-Brexit will assist British firms in becoming even more global than they currently are? It seems ironic to note that Brexit will force the...

Geopolitics Strategy Economics
20 March 2018
Article
The role of interorganizational fit in global account management

In this paper, we apply the concept of interorganizational fit to the use of global account management programs in multinational corporations. It is predicted that greater fit between vendor and cu...

Global Business Customer Centricity Geopolitics
1 February 2007
Programs