This study explores the relationship between early-stage imprints and late-stage succession strategies in the transfer of branded organizational values and social missions through the sale and exit process of a single founder hybrid social enterprise (HSE) to a First Nations community-owned business. Employing a novel process tracing methodology, we inferentially and causally examine the journey from start up to entrepreneurial exit to determine why and how a specific outcome happened. Our findings demonstrate how early imprints shape organizational values and the tensions inherent in dual founder agency, which in turn influences succession planning strategies aimed at transferring social brands. The findings also indicate a need for theoretically decoupling sale from exit outcomes as an important but understudied window for imprinting theory. This research contributes to the business and society literature by offering new insights into the causal mechanisms underpinning HSE founder exit, the significance of post-sale founder imprints and the nuanced processes of transferring social brands to value-aligned buyers.
Moroz et al. (Fri,) studied this question.