Coming Back and Giving Back: Social Class Origins of Entrepreneurs and Corporate Philanthropy in China

Building on research on social class origin and cognitive concepts from the psychology literature, we propose that social class environment during childhood creates class-based cognitive imprints among individuals, leading to contextualist cognitive tendencies among lower-class individuals and solipsistic cognitive tendencies among upper-class individuals. We theorize that these class-based cognitive tendencies explain the prosocial behavior of individuals, such that the philanthropic orientation is greater among entrepreneurs of lower-class origin compared with those of upper-class origin. The philanthropic orientation among lower-class entrepreneurs is further amplified by imprints of education and political propaganda. These theoretical predictions received support considering entrepreneurs in Chinese private enterprises. Our study contributes to the literature on the social class origin concept from the social stratification theory, the psychology literature on cognitive perspectives, and imprinting theory.