XLRI was founded in 1949, by Father Quinn Enright SJ, in Jamshedpur. XLRI began with courses for training trade union leaders in management practices in 1949. The school offers a full-time 2 year post graduate program in Business Management and Human Resources Management, a 1 year full-time General Management program (GMP), fellow doctoral programs (FPM) and many executive education programs. The college's GMP program, started in 1997, was the first full-time one-year MBA program in India. XLRI features consistently among the top 5 business schools of the country. In 2012, XLRI was ranked No.4 among top 75 B-schools in India by Outlook India, ranked No. 5 by the 2012 edition of CNBC-TV18’s Top B-Schools in India, No. 4 by Business Today and No. 3 by Business World. The PMIR (Personnel Management & Industrial Relations) program has been selected as the best 'HR Course' in Asia-Pacific. The school has also been recognized for its research acumen by London Business School and ranked among top 5 research schools in India, cutting across management and technical institutes.