Communist footprint and subordinate influence behavior in post-communist transition economies

Abstract

How does length of exposure to communism, the communist footprint, affect individuals’ influence behaviors at work today? While imprinting theory has debated how exposure/lack thereof to communism—communist imprint—affects individuals, it has disregarded the exposure's length. We show that the shorter the communist footprint, the less negative professionals are toward organizationally constructive influence behaviors, and that individuals with longer communist footprints at higher-level position levels do not approve of organizationally destructive behaviors as much as their lower-level counterparts. We thus show that the continuous communist footprint provides a better understanding of work behaviors today than the dichotomous communist imprint. © 2016 Elsevier Inc.