Date of Award
2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Castrogiovanni, Gary J.
Abstract
My work investigates the effects of founding conditions for organizational founders on the eventual satisfaction founders have with the financial and social outcomes of their organization. First, I introduce two new constructs, social salience and economic salience, which represent the intended social or economic goals of the founder for their organization when they found the new organization. I then utilize organizational imprinting theory to argue that the social and economic salience, along with founders’ previous work experience, influence the structure of the new organization via the legal form. I then argue that the legal form influences the specific capabilities that the organization will acquire or create early in the organization’s life. Finally, I argue that the capabilities established at founding will influence the eventual satisfaction founders currently have with their organizations’ social and financial outcomes as the capabilities endure over time. Based on a sample of 150 organizational founders that are still actively managing their organizations, my results support the idea that founding conditions for individual founders influence the capabilities that their organizations create or acquire. Further, founders’ current level of satisfaction with the financial and social performance of their organizations is significantly related to these capabilities. These results largely support the process based model of imprinting effects on organizational outcomes, and suggest that founders play a critical role in setting the original imprint of an organization that will endure via organizational inertia, perhaps long after the imprint’s originally designed purpose.
Extent
137 p.
Recommended Citation
Lortie, Jason, "Imprinting Effects of Founding Conditions, Structure, and Capabilities on Social and Financial Organizational Outcome Satisfaction" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019. 1488.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_6/1488
Identifier
FA00004655
Comments
Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.