IIM Ahmedabad's mission is to help India and other developing countries improve their managerial practices.

In just four decades IIM Ahmedabad has evolved from being India’s premier management institute to a notable international school of management. It all started with Dr Vikram Sarabhai and a few other public spirited industrialists realizing that agriculture, education, health, transportation, population control, energy and public administration were all vital elements in a growing society and that it was necessary to link these meaningfully with industry. The result was the creation of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1961 as an autonomous body with the active collaboration of the Government of India, Government of Gujarat and industry.

From the very start the founders introduced the concept of faculty governance: all members of the faculty play an important role in administering the diverse academic and non-academic activities of the Institute. The empowerment of the faculty has been the propelling force behind the high quality of learning experience at IIM Ahmedabad. The Institute had initial collaboration with Harvard Business School. This collaboration greatly influenced the Institute’s approach to education. Gradually it emerged as a confluence of the best of Eastern and Western values.

IIMA's mission is to help India and other developing countries improve their managerial practices both in the private and in the public sectors and adopt superior public policies. It seeks to do this through producing risk-taking leader-managers who will pioneer new managerial practices and set new standards; through producing teachers and researchers who will generate new ideas of International significance and through purposeful consulting aimed at helping client organizations scale new heights.

Research is at the core of IIM Ahmedabad and provides a major interface with the wider academic and business world. It provides new theoretical frameworks that enable reassessment and refinement of current practices and thinking. Groundbreaking interdisciplinary research by the faculty feeds directly into an enhanced learning environment at the Institute and indirectly to a wider audience of practicing managers and teachers of management.

The reputation of IIM Ahmedabad owes much to the exceptional caliber of its faculty. The Institute prides itself on creating an environment of substantial academic freedom overlaid by rigorous, self-imposed standards of excellence and socially responsive practices.

The faculty willingly submit themselves to a unique, rigorous, open and continuous process of appraisal and feedback from the students. This enables the faculty to fine tune course contents and delivery mechanisms. Through a variety of committees, faculty plays a hands-on role in the governance of the Institute and assumes total ownership of collective decisions.

The Institute’s library is an invaluable resource with close to 180,000 volumes, 600 current periodicals, 700 CDs and more than 2000 working papers and dissertations. It also provides indexing search services from a number of major databases like ABI/Inform, Econlit and BSP. The library has set up the 3i network or “Information Infrastructure for Institutions” to provide business, industry, environmental, agricultural and economic information to the users.