Organizational Imprinting Across Levels: An Integrative Multi-Level Literature Review

This study provides an integrative review of organizational imprinting, tracing its theoretical development from Stinchcombe’s pioneering work to contemporary research. It examines how founding conditions leave enduring effects on organizations and individuals and how these imprints may change over time. The review covers 45 publications selected from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The findings show that organizational imprints originate in founders’ values, individual career experiences, leadership orientations, organizational routines, institutional conditions, and broader historical and cultural contexts. Imprinting effects are not limited to a single level of analysis. They move upward and downward across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels through socialization, selection, routinization, organizational narratives, institutional pressure, legitimacy seeking, and governance logic. Their persistence or transformation depends on environmental fit, institutional change, leadership intervention, re-imprinting, and strategic reinterpretation. The study contributes to organizational theory and organizational imprinting literature by explaining how organizational legacies persist, weaken, transform, and move across levels over time.