Huawei and the Invisible Hand of MAO Zedong : How Did a Defunct National Leader Imprint the Culture and the Internationalization Strategy of a Contemporary MNC?

In this study, we investigate how national leaders of the past can imprint the organizational cultures and internationalization strategies of contemporary MNCs. We address the case of Huawei, founded by Ren Zhengfei, who, we argue, has been remarkably influenced by Mao Zedong’s thoughts and actions. We analyze speeches and writings of Mao and Ren, biographic accounts of both leaders, studies of Mao’s ideological legacy, and the strategy literature about Huawei. Contributing to imprinting theory, we study and discuss a case of cross-level, indirect imprinting by which the internationalization of a company is imprinted by a founder, who is himself imprinted with the thoughts and actions of a past national leader. The findings reveal three empirical categories of Maoist imprints in Huawei: discursive imprinting, strategic behavior imprinting, and cultural imprinting. This study contributes to the nascent effort to apply imprinting theory to internationalization research, responds to the call for research on imprinting genesis processes, and joins the growing research interest in Huawei’s organizational culture