IAE is a Catholic private management school founded in 1978 and based in Pilar, on the outskirts of the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires.
It was founded by Opus Dei, a Catholic order frequently associated with business and education, and describes itself as "based on Christian tenets, with a special focus on every individual’s intrinsic rights and dignity".
It ran its first management programme in 1978 and its first executive MBA three years later. Since 1991 it has operated as the business faculty of Austral University, another Opus Dei foundation.
In 1998 it moved from its previous location in Buenos Aires to the Austral campus in Pilar, just over 20 miles from Central Buenos Aires, shared with the university hospital and Austral’s other campuses and close to the Parque Industrial Pilar, one of the largest business parks in South America.
IAE has had Triple Crown accreditation since 2005. Its academic advisory council, created in 1987, draws on expertise from Harvard and from IESE University of Navarra, another Opus Dei foundation.
It has created a further Argentinian campus at Rosario and has played a role in the creation of business courses and institutions in other South American countries, starting with the IEM school in neighbouring Uruguay in 1986.
Research units include the Centre for Strategic Mining Studies, intended to assist Argentina’s significant mining sector, and an emphasis on small and medium enterprises dates to the early days of IAE, with the creation of an SME programme in 1984. In 2015 IAE set up the SUMA network to link alumni from its SME programmes across Argentina.
