Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings

This study aims to unpack the process of institutional sedimentation, whereby organizations come to be layered with successive imprints beyond the founding period. Drawing upon historical research and a longitudinal case study, we trace how a flagship state-owned enterprise in China navigated punctuated shifts in its environment – shifts which undermined entrenched beliefs about what constitutes appropriate organizational behavior and goals. We identify three strategies – cognitive conditioning, cautious adaptation, and bridging – that enable an organization to conform to changing institutional mandates, whilst maintaining coherence with organizational elements inherited from the past. By detailing the complex interplay between different generations of imprints, our study sheds light on the intra-organizational processes that determine why some elements and not others are imprinted upon an organization; and, why some imprints persist while others decay or fade away. In so doing, our study provides insights into how organizations manage persistent tensions between adaptive and inertial pressures.