Imprinting and contested practices: The impact of public directors' private‐sector experience on temporary employment in Dutch public organizations

Abstract This paper studies how organizational leaders' early private‐sector leadership experiences impact adopting a contested organizational practice, temporary employment, in public organizations. We employed unique organization/year‐level register panel data on the executive careers of the directors of Dutch public organizations and the prevalence of temporary employment in organizations they lead. Fixed‐effect regression analyses of 29,031 organization/year observations between 2006 and 2019 show greater use of temporary employment in public organizations when directors have early private‐sector executive experience. We found a similar impact of leaders' imprinted experiences in “fully” public and “hybrid” organizations that combine public and private sector elements. We discuss implications and suggestions for future studies on organizational leaders' role in contested practice adoption in the public sector.