Abstract: With the continuous improvement of the economic strength of private enterprises, their external corporate social responsibility behaviors, such as charitable donation, pollution control and product safety, are becoming more and more active, but there are great differences in the practice of employee welfare. What factors lead to the differences in employee welfare practice in private enterprises is worth further exploring. From the perspective of institutional imprinting, this paper argues that the institutional imprinting of private enterprises may have a profound impact on the legitimacy of private enterprises' cognition of employee welfare. Based on the data of the ninth national sample survey of private enterprises, this paper examines the institutional imprinting of employees' welfare practice in private enterprises by examining the reformed private enterprises and experience of in-system. The empirical results show that compared with the non-reformed private enterprises, the welfare level of employees in the reformed private enterprises is higher, and the experience of in-system also has a positive relationship with the welfare level of employees. Further analysis finds that the Party organization in enterprise contributes to the continuation of employee welfare's imprinting. The conclusion of this paper provides a research enlightenment that the practice of employee welfare in private enterprises is closely related to the institutional context of the establishment of enterprises.

Key words: employee welfare, institutional imprinting, reformed enterprise, in-system experience, private enterprise