AMDISA

ASSOCIATION OF MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTIONS IN SOUTH ASIA

AMDISA - Association of Management Development Institutions in South Asia, established in 1989, is a network of Management Education and Management Development Institutions in South Asia. It is an international not-for-profit association. It has 316 institutional members. Its mission is to “Promote management education and management development activities in South Asia, taking into account the economic, social and cultural context of the Region, with the firm dedication to world-wide exchange of experience and ideas in the fields concerned.”

AMDISA is the only Association which networks management development institutions across the eight South Asian Nations through exchanging information, facilitating inter-country research initiatives, conducting regional conferences, workshops, colloquia and programmes, and thereby providing a forum for interaction among academics and business leaders.

AMDISA launched the global benchmark quality assurance and accreditation system for Business Schools - SAQS. SAQS is the International Quality Assurance Program run by AMDISA as a service to the management education profession worldwide. SAQS emerged in an EFMD - AMDISA cooperation through a European Union funded Asia - Link project in 2003-04. It is inspired by EFMD's EQUIS criteria and is an international accreditation system. It is a globally benchmarked system for mentoring, quality improvement, quality assurance and accreditation. SAQS accreditation processes lead to improvement through highlighting the need to meet internationally accepted quality standards. SAQS Accredited Quality Label is a recognition to the institution's commitment to Quality and Quality Assurance through continuous improvement. SAQS accreditation is institutional. Institution being defined as the organisational unit providing business and management education. So far 34 schools have been granted Accreditation - 1 from Bangladesh, 29 from India and 4 from Pakistan; and 13 schools have been granted Re-Accreditation - 11 from India and 2 from Pakistan. 3 schools have been Re-Re-Accredited from India. Currently there are 21 institutions - 1 from Bangladesh, 14 from India, 1 from Maldives, 1 from Nepal, 3 from Pakistan and 1 from Sri Lanka, in the SAQS process for Accreditation / Re-Accreditation. Recently, Association of Indian Universities (AIU), New Delhi, India has accepted AMDISA’s Quality Assurance Program SAQS at par with NBA accreditation for according equivalence to the two-year full time PGDM with MBA degree of Indian Universities.

AMDISA publishes a Newsletter three times a year and the South Asian Journal of Management, a quarterly double blind refereed journal. The South Asian Journal of Management (SAJM) is a prestigious publication and is indexed by two internationally acclaimed database services, EBSCO and ProQuest.

Since its inception, AMDISA has organized sixteen biennial South Asian Management Forums (SAMFs) by rotation in all the South Asian countries. The 16th SAMF on the theme "Impact of Pandemic on Business and Management: Strategies for Sustainability and Growth" was organized by IUBAT—International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh in December, 2021.

AMDISA's administrative structure includes the General Assembly of members held every two years, which elects an Executive Board representing all member nations. The Presidents of National Networks in South Asia, Past Presidents of AMDISA and Vice Chancellor, University of Hyderabad are Invitees to the Executive Board.

The AMDISA Secretariat is located in the University of Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, India, and is headed by the Executive Director. The Secretariat is built on 2 acres of land, obtained as a generous gesture from the Central University of Hyderabad on its campus. While the Secretariat serves the membership and initiates activity plans, its activities are hosted by member institutions in different countries of South Asia.