Founding-era conditions imprint organizational processes and produce replicated patterns later.

Evidence

Basically, this concept postulates that either initial cognitive schemes, competences, and so forth— of a founding entrepreneur or team, for instance—or specific contextual conditions (organizational structure, postwar depression, internet boom, etc.) at the time of founding imprint organizational processes at later stages and, eventually, amount to a replicated pattern. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 56

Categorization

• CANDY: Compact, tweetable version of imprinting theory — founding conditions, be they a founder’s habits or a depression or an internet boom, echo through an organization’s later life.