The latest research by Professor Zhu Hang and Professor Li Xinchun Uses Imprinting Theory to Analyze the Underlying Reasons and External Strengthening and Weakening Factors of Restructured Family Enterprises to Maintain Internal Social Responsibility Comm

Why the number of employees, wages and welfare policies have not changed significantly after the restructuring of public-owned enterprises? Professor Zhu Hang (corresponding author) and Professor Li Xinchun of our school, Associate Professor Ye Wenping of Jinan University (the first author, Ph.D. trained by Professor Li Xinchun of our school) and collaborator Shi Yaya published a paper in "Management World" in May 2022 with the title of "The Imprint of Public Ownership and the Internal Social Responsibility of Restructured Family Enterprises", using a dataset composed of observations of 8,499 Chinese listed family enterprises from 2007 to 2017 to study the imprinting effect of public ownership experience on the labor relations of restructured family enterprises.

The research finds that the investment in employee welfare and the external evaluation of internal social responsibility of the restructured family enterprises is significantly better than that of the non-restructured enterprises. And there is no significant difference in the fulfillment of social responsibility before and after the restructuring. This effect decays over time of restructuring. At the same time, the proportion of state-owned shares and the regional unemployment rate will strengthen the above relationship, and the family intergenerational participation will weaken the above relationship, which supports the hypothesis of the paper.

This research not only provides a strong explanation for the above phenomenon, but also brings new theoretical significance. This paper studies the imprint retention mechanism when both the imprinter's action logic and the imprinted person change, which can further enhance the analytical power of imprinting theory in a dynamic environment. At the same time, this research innovatively applies the perspective of institutional logic to analyze the game of different forces around imprint retention in a complex institutional environment, which is conducive to a deeper understanding of how imprinting effect is maintained and faded, and it can also enhance the practical analytical power of the imprinting theory. In addition, this paper provides a new and important perspective for the study of strategic behavior of family enterprises from the longitudinal perspective of history.