The investigation of company daycare centers and company social institutions can be approached from various perspectives. It is therefore natural to analyze these topics from the viewpoints of educational science, social psychology, or socioeconomics. The following study is fundamentally a legal examination that investigates the network of norms governing company social institutions and the associated purposes. However, the work does not stop at this point but instead turns in a second step to classical legal sociological questions that relate to the implementation and daily life of these norms. In this context, it addresses the consequences of the transformation of the entire legal and social order in East Germany for the status and continued existence of these social institutions. For this aspect of the investigation, classical forms of legal sociological methodology were applied, namely conducting case studies through document analyses and interviews. However, both methods can only be applied with great caution in studies on social transformation. Regarding document analyses, there is generally no shortage of records; at least some of the privatized companies maintained an operational archive in 1994/95. Other companies have submitted their documents to state archives, where they have only been partially made accessible to the public so far.