Lasting History: A Literature Review of Organizational Imprinting and Prospects

Wang Yanyu, Xie Wei

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 38, Issue 12, pp. 91 - 102 (2016)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2016.12.007

Abstract

History is an important explanation factor of reality. The economic and political systems in modern Chinese history are quite different from present ones, but regretfully the attention on the role of history from domestic academia is insufficient. However, in western academia, there has already existed the critical concept of "organizational imprinting" understanding the role of history in reality for about half century, and the study on the effect of founding condition on present and future organizations. Based on Stinchcombe (1965), this paper reviews the concept of organizational imprinting, analyzes the emergence and solidification role of organizational imprinting, builds the system dynamics model, summarizes the application fields of organizational imprinting, and raises the importance of organizational imprinting to Chinese context & possible research opportunities. It makes the following academic contributions:firstly, it systematically reviews organizational imprinting theory and defines the importance and urgency of organizational imprinting to Chinese management research; secondly, it identifies potential directions in organizational imprinting research in Chinese context.

Keywords

organizational imprinting; Chinese context; system dynamics; literature review; further study