This study challenges the assumption of homogeneous institutional imprinting in the literature on emerging and transition economies. Using the context of the pre-liberalization era in India, we postulate that the nature and duration of imprinting forces vary, resulting in heterogeneous imprints across the cohort. The pre-liberalization economic environment in India resulted in a protectionist regime of state-controlled business policies with import substitution, stamping capability-deficits and risk-aversion routines on incumbent firms. Using organizational imprinting theory, we find evidence that the degree of protectionist-era imprints effects incumbents' innovation in their later life periods. Furthermore, this study combines organizational imprinting and behavioural theory of the firm to better understand how imprints evolve in the post-liberalization era. We discover that incumbent firms' performance shortfalls diminish protectionist imprints, whereas their access to available slack strengthens them. We used the data of pre-liberalization economic regime of India from 1956 until institutional inflection in 1991 and tested our conceptual model with a large sample of 32,092 firm-year observations.
