Question

Explain in detail Multilevel Theories. Discuss your answer in 800 words

Answer 1

Organizations are multilevel systems. This axiom-the foundation of organizational systems theory-is reflected in the earliest examples of organizational theory, including the Hawthorne Studies, Homans's theory of groups (1950), Lewin's field theory (1951), sociotechnical systems theory, Likert's theory of organizational effectiveness (1961), Thompson's (1967) theory of organizational rationality, and Katz and Kahn's (1966) social organizational theory, to name but a few. Further, this axiom continues to provide a foundation for virtually all contemporary theories of organizational behavior. Yet, despite the historical tradition and contemporary relevance of organizational systems theory, its influence is merely metaphorical. The system is sliced into organization, group, and individual levels, each level the province of different disciplines, theories, and approaches. The organization may be an integrated system, but organizational science is not.

Foundations for Multilevel Theory in Organizations

Conceptual Underpinnings: General Systems Theory

General systems theory (GST) has been among the more dominant intellectual perspectives of the twentieth century and has been shaped by many contributors. Systems concepts originate in the "holistic" Aristotelian worldview that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, in contrast with "normal" science, which tends to be insular and reductionistic. The central goal of GST is to establish principles that generalize across phenomena and disciplines-an ambitious effort that is aimed at nothing less than promoting the unity of science.

Systems principles are manifest as analogies or logical homologies. Logical homologies represent identical concepts (that is, isomorphism), and parallel processes linking different concepts (that is, homology), that generalize to very different systems phenomena. For example, it is noted that open systems counteract the second law of thermodynamics-entropy-by importing energy and information from the external environment, and transforming it, to maintain homeostasis.Feedback and servo- mechanisms are the basis for the purposive responses of cybernetic systems. Organizational systems are proposed to have analogous structures and processes.

Whether one takes a more macro or micro perspective, the influence of GST on organizational science has been pervasive.Unfortunately, however, that influence has been primarily metaphorical. The bureaucratic-closed systems-machine metaphor is contrasted with a contingent-open systems-living organism metaphor. Although metaphor has important value-virtually all formal theory is rooted in underlying metaphor -lack of specificity,formal identity, and precise definition can yield truisms that mislead and fail the test of science. GST has exhibited heuristic value but has contributed relatively little to the development of testable principles in the organizational sciences. It is to this latter concern that the multilevel perspective is directed.

As social systems, organizations are qualitatively distinct from living cells and other concrete physical systems. The goal of the multilevel perspective is not to identify principles that generalize to other types of systems. Although laudable, such an effort must often of necessity gloss over differences between qualitatively different systems in order to maintain homology across systems. The primary goal of the multilevel perspective in organizational science is to identify principles that enable a more integrated understanding of phenomena that unfold across levels in organizations.

Macro and Micro Perspectives

Fundamental to the levels perspective is the recognition that micro phenomena are embedded in macro contexts and that macro phenomena often emerge through the interaction and dynamics of lower-level elements. Organizational scholars, however,have tended to emphasize either a micro or a macro perspective. The macro perspective is rooted in its sociological origins. It assumes that there are substantial regularities in social behavior that transcend the apparent differences among social actors. Given a particular set of situational constraints and demographics, people will behave similarly.Therefore, it is possible to focus on aggregate or collective responses and to ignore individual variation. In contrast, the micro perspective is rooted in psychological origins.It assumes that there are variations in individual behavior, and that a focus on aggregates will mask important individual differences that are meaningful in their own right. Its focus is on variations among individual characteristics that affect individual reactions.

Neither single-level perspective can adequately account for organizational behavior. The macro perspective neglects the means by which individual behavior, perceptions, affect,and interactions give rise to higher-level phenomena. There is a danger of superficiality and triviality inherent in anthropomorphization. Organizations do not behave; people do.In contrast, the micro perspective has been guilty of neglecting contextual factors that can significantly constrain the effects of individual differences that lead to collective responses, which ultimately constitute macro phenomena.

Macro researchers tend to deal with global measures or data aggregates that are actual or theoretical representations of lower-level phenomena, but they cannot generalize to those lower levels without committing errors of misspecification. This renders problematic the drawing of meaningful policy or application implications from the findings. For example, assume that we can demonstrate a significant relationship between organizational investments in training and organizational performance. The intuitive generalization-that one could use the magnitude of the aggregate relationship to predict how individual performance would increase as a function of increased organizational investments in training-is not supportable, because of the well-known problem of ecological inference. Relationships among aggregate data tend to be higher than corresponding relationships among individual data elements. This fact continues to be a significant difficulty for macro-oriented policy disciplines-sociology, political science, economics, education policy,epidemiology-that attempt to draw individual-level inferences from aggregate data.

Micro researchers suffer from an obverse problem, which also makes the desire toinfluence human resource management policy difficult. We may, for example, be able to show that individual cognitive ability increases individual performance. However, we cannot then assert that selection systems that produce higher aggregate cognitive ability will necessarily yield improved organizational performance. Perhaps they will, but that inference is not directly supported by individual-level analyses. Misspecifications of this sort, however, are not unusual. Such"atomistic fallacies," in which organizational psychologists suggest team- or organization-level interventions based on individual-level data, are common in our literature.

A levels approach, combining micro and macro perspectives, engenders a moreintegrated science of organizations. House and colleagues (1995) suggest the term meso because it captures this sense that organizational science is both macro and micro.Whatever it is called, we need a more integrated approach. The limitations that the organizational disciplines suffer with respect to influencing policy and applications can be resolved through the development of more complete models of organizational phenomena-models that are system-oriented but do not try to capture the complexity of the entire system. Instead, by focusing on significant and salient phenomena,conceptualizing and assessing at multiple levels, and exhibiting concern about both top-down and bottom-up processes, it is possible to build a science of organizations that is theoretically rich and application-relevant.

Formative Theory Development: The Emergence of a Levels Perspective

Early efforts to conceptualize and study organizations as multilevel systems were based in the interactionist perspective and focused on the construct of organizational climate.Those early efforts played a significant role in developing a"levels" perspective. Interactionists see behavior as a function of both person and situation, with the nature of the combined effect broadly conceived. Thus behavior is viewed as a combined result of contextual and individual-difference effects.The interactionist perspective has had a pervasive influence on organizational research. It has played a dominant role in shaping research on climate, first posited by Lewin,Lippitt, and White (1939). It continues to exert influence through research on person-organization fit.

As organizational psychology developed as a distinct subdiscipline in the 1950s,organizational climate emerged as a central construct for understanding organizational effectiveness. Researchers of this era described climate as a representation of "organizational stimuli" or "environmental characteristics" presumed to affect individual behavior and attitudes. Forehand and Gilmer (1964) reviewed the climate literature,highlighting problems of conceptualization and measurement. They criticized researchers' failure to consistently and clearly distinguish whether climate was viewed as an objective property of the organization or as an individual perception, and they bemoaned the resulting confusion regarding whether climate should be assessed at the organizational level, via objective characteristics, or at the individual level, via perceptions.

James and Jones's (1974) subsequent review helped to dispel much of this confusion.They distinguished objective characteristics of the organizational context, which are the antecedents of climate, from individuals' interpretive perceptions, which ascribe meaning to the context. This conceptualization views climate perceptions as a result of both contextual and individual influences. In addition, James and Jones distinguished psychological (that is, individual-level) climate from organizational climate, arguing that homogeneous perceptions could be aggregated to represent climate as a property of the organization. James and Jones's conclusions influenced the nature of climate research for the next two decades.

There were two critical contributions of this formative research on the development of a levels perspective in organizational science. First, this research made top-down cross-level contextual effects salient, establishing the need to conceptualize and assess organization, subunit, and group factors that had the potential to affect individual perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. This energized a stream of research that linked organizational structure and technology to individual attitudes. As this research progressed, models were elaborated to include mediating perceptions. Many studies were conducted that demonstrated that individual-level climate and/or job-characteristics perceptions mediated the linkage between contextual factors at higher levels (group, subunit, or organization) and individual-level outcomes. This work emphasized the importance of top-down cross-level contextual effects on lower-level phenomena. Thus group and organization factors are contexts for individual perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors and need to be explicitly incorporated into meaningful models of organizational behavior.

The second contribution of this research was to make salient emergent phenomena that manifest at higher levels. Although organizational policies, practices, and procedures are the antecedents of individual-level climate perceptions, individuals in organizations do not exist in a vacuum. People in groups and subunits are exposed to common features,events, and processes. They interact, sharing interpretations, which over time may converge on consensual views of the group or organizational climate. Processes such as attraction, selection, and attrition;socialization; and leadership also operate to reduce the variability of individual differences and perceptions,facilitating common interpretations of the climate. In such conditions, individual-level perceptions can be averaged to represent higher-level group, subunit, or organizational climates.This work emphasized the importance of bottom-up emergent processes that yield higher-level phenomena. Thus individual social-psychological processes can be manifest as group, subunit, and organizational phenomena and need to be explicitly incorporated into meaningful models of organizational behavior.

Multilevel Organizational Theory and Research

Overview

Although interest in the development and testing of multilevel theoretical models has increased dramatically in the past decade, there have been relatively few efforts to provide multilevel theoretical frameworks for organizational researchers. Multilevel theory building presents a substantial challenge to organizational scholars trained, for the most part, to "think micro" or to "think macro" but not to "think micro and macro"-not, that is, to "think multilevel." Our goal is to explain fundamental issues, synthesize and extend existing frameworks, and identify theoretical principles to guide the development and evaluation of multilevel models.

In the first part of this section, we describe multilevel theoretical processes, providing insights into and principles for "thinking multilevel." The issues we examine are central to the development of multilevel theories and provide conceptual guidance for theorists seeking to develop specific multilevel models. In the second part of this section, we focus on model operationalization. Most of the difficulties of conducting multilevel research have concerned the consequences of incongruent levels among constructs,measures, or analyses. We provide principles to guide the interested researcher through the problem of model specification.

The principles we derive are intended to be general guidelines applicable to most circumstances; they are not immutable laws. We acknowledge at the onset that the complexity of the issues involved in multilevel theory makes exceptions to the general principles inevitable. In such cases, theory takes precedence-that is the one overarching principle.

Principles for Multilevel Organizational Theory Building

This section describes fundamental theoretical processes that provide the underpinnings for developing multilevel theories. We hope to assist readers in emulating and extending the best of current multilevel thinking. Toward this end, we highlight established principles and consider provocative new possibilities for multilevel theory building and research. For ease of presentation, we present central principles of multilevel theory building and research organized around the what, how, where, when, and why (and why not) of multilevel theoretical models.

What

On what should multilevel theory building and research focus? The possibilities are virtually endless, reflecting the full breadth of organizational processes, behavior, and theory. Nevertheless, a few guidelines regarding the process of choosing a focus for study are possible. First, we urge scholars to begin to fashion their theoretical models by focusing on the endogenous construct(s) of interest: What phenomenon is the theory and research attempting to understand? The endogenous construct, or dependent variable,drives the levels, constructs, and linking processes to be addressed by the theory. Too frequently, researchers begin theory development with the antecedents of interest: "These are interesting constructs; I wonder how well they predict generic outcomes." Such an approach invites the development of a trivial or misspecified theory. Without careful explication of the phenomenon of interest, it is exceedingly difficult to specify a meaningful network of potential antecedents. Principle: Theory building should begin with the designation and definition of the theoretical phenomenon and the endogeneous construct(s) of interest.

Second, multilevel theory is neither always needed nor always better than single-level theory. Micro theorists may articulate theoretical models capturing individual-level processes that are invariant across contexts, or they may examine constructs and processes that have no meaningful parallels at higher levels. Similarly, macro theorists may develop theoretical models that describe the characteristics of organizations, distinct from the actions and characteristics of organizational subunits (groups, individuals).Although we think that such phenomena are likely to be rare, in such cases multilevel theory building is not necessary.

Finally, theorists may also find it impractical to develop multilevel models for processes,relationships, and outcomes new to organizational science; that is, when tackling phenomena previously unexplored in the organizational literature, a theorist may find it helpful to initially act as if the phenomena occur at only one level of theory and analysis.In this way, a theorist temporarily restricts his or her focus, putting off consideration of multilevel processes for a period. Huselid's work (1995) on strategic human resource management provides an example. Huselid has documented organization- level relationships among human resource practices, aggregate employee outcomes, and firm financial performance, but what are the cross-level and emergent processes-the linkages of individual responses to human resource practices-that mediate the relationship between organizational human resource practices and organizational performance? The time is now ripe for such multilevel theory building.

Having acknowledged that there may be instances in which multilevel models may be unnecessary, we also offer the following caveat: given the nature of organizations as hierarchically nested systems, it will be difficult in practice to find single-level relations that are unaffected by other levels. The set of individual-level phenomena that are invariant across contexts is likely to be very small. Similarly, the set of group- or organization-level phenomena that are completely uninfluenced by lower levels is also likely to be small. Failure to account for such effects when they exist will yield incomplete or misspecified models.

Principle: Multilevel theoretical models are relevant to the vast majority of organizational phenomena. Multilevel models may, however, be unnecessary if the central phenomena of interest (a) are uninfluenced by higher-level organizational units,(b) do not reflect the actions or cognitions of lower-level organizational units, and/or (c)have been little explored in the organizational literature.

How

By definition, multilevel models are designed to bridge micro and macro perspectives,specifying relationships between phenomena at higher and at lower levels of analysis (for example, individuals and groups, groups and organizations, and so on). Accordingly, a multilevel theoretical model must specify how phenomena at different levels are linked.Links between phenomenaat different levels may be top-down or bottom-up. Many theories will include both top-down and bottom-up processes.

Top-down processes: contextual influences. Each level of an organizational system is embedded or included in a higher-level context. Thus individuals are embedded within groups, groups within organizations, organizations within industries, industrial sectors within environmental niches, and so on. Top-down processes describe the influence of higher-level contextual factors on lower levels of the system. Fundamentally, higher level units may influence lower-level units in two ways: (1) higher-level units may have a direct effect on lower-level units, and/or (2) higher-level units may shape or moderate relationships and processes in lower-level units.

An organization has a direct effect on the behavior of its individual employees when, for example, its culture determines the accepted patterns of employee interaction and work behavior (for example, how formally employees address each other, or the extent to which employees question their supervisors' directives). An organization has a moderating effect on lower-level relationships when the relationship between two lower-level constructs changes as a function of organizational context. Thus, for example, the relationship between employees' conscientiousness and performance may vary across organizational contexts. In contexts that provide autonomy and resources,conscientiousness may be associated with performance. However, contexts low on autonomy and resources are likely to constrain the effects of conscientiousness on performance, hence the relationship will be weak.

Principle: Virtually all organizational phenomena are embedded in a higher-level context, which often has either direct or moderating effects on lower-level processes and outcomes. Relevant contextual features and effects from the higher level should be incorporated into theoretical models. Bottom-up processes: emergence. Many phenomena in organizations have their theoretical foundation in the cognition, affect,behavior, and characteristics of individuals, which-through social interaction, exchange,and amplification-have emergent properties that manifest at higher levels. In other words,many collective constructs represent the aggregate influence of individuals. For example,the construct of organizational culture-a particularly broad and inclusive construct summarizes the collective characteristics, behaviors, and values of an organization's members. Organizational cultures differ insofar as the characteristics, behaviors, and values of organizational members differ.

Bottom-up processes describe the manner in which lower-level properties emerge to form collective phenomena. The emergence of phenomena across increasingly higher levels of systems has been a central theme of GST. Formative efforts to apply GST focus on the structure of emergence-that is, on the higher level, collective structure that results from the dynamic interactions among lower-level elements. The broad system typologies of Boulding (1956) and Miller (1978) attempt to capture the increasingly complex collectivities that are based on lower-level building blocks of the sys- tem. Thus, for example, interactions among atoms create molecular structure, or interactions among team members yield team effectiveness. This perspective views an emergent phenomenon as unique and holistic; it cannot be reduced to its lower-level elements.

A more contemporary perspective, one that has its roots in GST, derives from theories of chaos, self-organization, and complexity, and it views emergence as both process and structure. This perspective attempts to understand how the dynamics and interactions of lower-level elements unfold over time to yield structure or collective phenomena at higher levels. This perspective is not a reversion to reductionism;rather, it is an effort to comprehend the full complexity of a system-its elements, their dynamics over time, and the means by which elements in dynamic interaction create collective phenomena (e.g., Cowan, Pines, & Meltzer, 1994). The two perspectives are compatible but different. We draw on this latter perspective and attempt to understand both process and structure in our conceptualization of emergence.

Emergence can be characterized by two qualitatively distinct types-composition and compilation-that may be juxtaposed as anchors for a range of emergence alternatives. To simplify the discussion that follows and make distinctions more apparent, we treat composition and compilation as ideal or pure types. Later in the chapter, we further elaborate their underlying theoretical differences, discuss interaction processes and dynamics that shape emergence, and explore forms of emergence that are more akin to composition or more akin to compilation. Composition, based on assumptions of isomorphism, describes phenomena that are essentially the same as they emerge upward across levels. Composition processes describe the coalescence of identical lower-level properties-that is, the convergence of similar lower-level characteristics to yield a higher level property that is essentially the same as its constituent elements. Compilation, based on assumptions of discontinuity, describes phenomena that comprise a common domain but are distinctively different as they emerge across levels. The concepts are functionally equivalent-that is, they occupy essentially the same role in models at different levels, but they are not identical, as in composition. Compilation processes describe the combination of related but different lower-level properties-that is, the configuration of different lower-level characteristics to yield a higher-level property that is functionally equivalent to its constituent elements.

The distinction between composition and compilation forms of emergence is best illustrated with examples. Consider the composition model for psychological and organizational climate. It indicates that both constructs reference the same content, have the same meaning, and share the same nomological network. For example, an organization's climate for service is a reflection of organizational members' shared perceptions of the extent to which organizational policies, procedures, and practices reward and encourage customer service. An organization's climate for service-whether positive or negative-emerges from the shared, homogeneous perceptions of organizational members. Thus individual and organizational climates are essentially the same construct, although there are some qualitative differences at higher levels. Organizational climate is more inclusive and may have some unique antecedents relative to its lower-level origin in psychological climate. Composition models based on isomorphic assumptions have been the primary means of conceptualizing emergent phenomena.We describe collective phenomena that emerge through composition processes as shared properties, and we discuss them in more detail in a subsequent section.

Sometimes lower-level characteristics, behaviors, and perceptions may not coalesce.Instead, lower-level characteristics, behaviors, and/or perceptions may vary within a group or organization, and yet the configuration or pattern of lower-level characteristics,behaviors, and/or perceptions may nevertheless emerge, bottom-up, to characterize the unit as a whole. Consider, for example, individual and team performance. The compilation model for individual and team performance references performance as a functionally equivalent domain but specifies different antecedents and processes at different levels. Individual performance entails task-specific knowledge, skills, and abilities. Dyadic performance entails coordinated role exchanges. Team performance is a complex function of specific individual and dyadic-networked-contributions. Thus, in compilation models, the higher-level phenomenon is a complex combination of diverse lower-level contributions. The form of emergence described by compilation is not widely recognized and yet is inherent in many common phenomena, including the domains of learning, performance, norms, power, conflict, and effectiveness, among many others.Compilation-based emergent processes are relatively little explored from a multilevel perspective in the organizational literature. We describe collective phenomena that emerge through compilation processes as configural properties and discuss them in more detail in a subsequent section.

The type of emergent process is fundamentally affected by the nature of social-psychological interactions and can vary for a given phenomenon; that is, a particular emergent phenomenon may be compositional in some circumstances and compilational in others. Consider team performance once again. Team performance emerges from the behaviors of individual team members. But does team performance emerge as a result of the coalescence of the essentially identical behaviors of individual team members so that team performance simply reflects the sum or average performance of individual team members? Or is team performance the result of the array or pattern of individual team members' performance-the complex culmination of one team member's excellence on one task, another team member's excellence on a second task, and a third team member's fortunately inconsequential performance on yet a third task? The first conceptualization is an example of composition; the second is an example of compilation. Neither conceptualization is "right" in all circumstances. Rather, the determining factors are the dimension of interest for team performance, the nature of the team's work-flow interdependence, and the organizational context in which the team exists, among others.This example hints at the challenges inherent in explicating the precise bottom-up processes that yield many higher-level constructs.

Principle: Many higher-level phenomena emerge from characteristics, cognition,behavior, affect, and interactions among individuals. Conceptualization of emergent phenomena at higher levels should specify, theoretically, the nature and form of these bottom-up emergent processes.

Where

Virtually inseparable from the question of how is the question of where-that is, precisely where do top-down and bottom-up processes originate and culminate? The answers to these questions specify the focal entities-the specific organizational levels, units, or elements-relevant to theory construction. Suppose, for example, that a theorist is interested in the influence of unit climate on individual actions. What is the level of interest? For example, is it group climate? division climate? organizational climate? the climate of the informal friendship network? In the passages that follow, we will first explore the nature of organizational units as evoked by multilevel theory and then describe processes that determine the strength of the ties that link organizational levels or units.

Nature of organizational units. All but the smallest organizations are characterized by differentiation (horizontal divisions) and integration (vertical levels). These factors yield myriad entities, units, or levels. In organizational research, levels of theoretical interest focus on humans and social collectivities. Thus individuals, dyads, groups, subunits, and organizations are relevant levels (units, or entities) of conceptual interest. The structure is hierarchically nested so that higher-level units encompass those at lower levels. Many writers assert the importance of using formally designated units and levels for specification; for example, leadership research typically defines the "leader" as the formal unit manager. Generally speaking, formal units can be defined with little difficulty, although there can be exceptions, where unit boundaries or memberships are fuzzy.

Yet organizations are social systems in which people define their own informal social entities. A variety of phenomena may define units or entities that do not correspond with formal unit boundaries. For example, vertical dyad linkage (VDL) theory posits the formation of in-and out-groups as distinctive entities within a formal unit. Rentch (1990) demonstrates that patterns of social interaction across formal units influenced consensus on organizational climate, indicating that informal entities affect sensemaking processes. Often unit specification is based on expedience rather than on careful consideration. This can be problematic when the phenomena of interest are examined within formal units but are driven by informal processes that yield nonuniform patterns of dispersion. Therefore, levels and units should be consistent with the nature of the phenomenon of interest.

Principle: Unit specification (formal versus informal) should be driven by the theory of the phenomena in question. Specification of informal entities that cut across formal boundaries, or that occur within formal units and lead to differentiation, requires careful consideration.

Determinants of the strength of ties linking organizational levels or units. One overgeneralization of the systems metaphor is that everything is related to everything. In reality, some levels and units are much more likely than others to be strongly linked,through what Simon (1973) refers to as bond strength. The theorist needs to chose appropriate units and levels or risk a misspecified or ineffective theory. Bond strength and related concepts help to explain what is likely to be connected across levels, and why.

Simon views social organizations as nearly decomposable systems. In other words, limited aspects of the larger system can be meaningfully addressed without compromising the system's integrity. A social organization can be conceptualized as a set of subsystems composed of more elemental components that are arrayed in a hierarchical structure. The linkage among levels-individual, group, and organizational-and subsystems is determined by their bond strength, which refers to the extent to which characteristics, behaviors, dynamics, and processes of one level or unit influence the characteristics, behaviors, dynamics, and processes of another level or unit. The greater the implications of one unit's actions for another unit, the greater the strength of the bond linking the two units. Therefore, meaningful linkages increase in strength with proximity and inclusion, and they decrease in strength with distance and independence.

Other researchers have used similar concepts to express the same basic principle. Weick(1976) uses the concept of coupling to reference decomposable subsystems. House and colleagues (1995) describe inclusion as the proportion of a lower-level unit's activities that are devoted to a higher level; units that are highly included will be more closely linked to the higher level. Kozlowski and Salas (1997) use the term embeddedness to describe how lower-level phenomena are aligned with contextual factors and processes that originate at higher levels in the organizational system; alignment reflects strong bonds or inclusion across levels. Technostructural factors such as organizational goals,technology, and structure, as well as enabling processes such as leadership, socialization,and culture, influence embeddedness. From an interactionist perspective, Indik (1968) and James and Jones (1976) assert that strong interactions between levels require propinquity of structure and process and alignment of content. Constructs and processes implicated in bond strength, coupling, inclusion, and embeddedness will be more strongly linked across levels for relevant units.

This has obvious implications for models that incorporate multiple levels or units.Proximal, included, embedded, and directly coupled levels and units exhibit more meaningful relations than distal levels or loosely coupled units. Moreover, the content underlying constructs at different levels has to have some meaningful connection. For example, work-unit technology and structure exhibit cross-level effects on individuals because they constrain the characteristics of jobs. The levels are coupled and the content is meaningfully related in a common network of relations. In contrast, the potential effects of organization-level strategy on individual jobs is likely to be quite small. This does not mean that strategy has no effect; rather, its effects are mediated through so many intervening levels, units,and content domains that direct effects are likely to be very difficult to detect at the individual level because bond strength is weak and the focal content is not meaningfully related. The effects of strategy are likely to be indirect.

Principle: Linkages across levels are more likely to be exhibited for proximal, included,embedded, and/or directly coupled levels and entities.

Principle: Linkages are more likely to be exhibited for constructs that tap content domains underlying meaningful interactions across levels.

When

Time is rarely a consideration in either single-level or multilevel organizational models, yet it is clearly the case that many if not most organizational phenomena are influenced and shaped by time. Here we explore three ways in which time may be incorporated into a multilevel model, increasing the rigor, creativity, and effectiveness of multilevel theory building.

Time as a boundary condition or moderator. Many organizational phenomena have a unidirectional effect on higher- or lower-level organizational phenomena, but multilevel relationships are not always so simple; instead, over time the relationship between phenomena at different levels may prove bidirectional or reciprocal. A given phenomenon may appear to originate at a higher or lower level according to the theorist's assumption about the current time point in a stream or cycle of events. The failure, quite common, to make such assumptions explicit can lead to apparently contradictory models of the same phenomenon and to debates about its "true" level.

For example, organizational culture is more likely to be based on emergent processes,either when the organization is at an early point in its life cycle or when the organization is undergoing dramatic change. In effect, individual sensemaking and social construction are more active and have a greater impact when the organizational context is ambiguous or in a state of flux. Therefore development or change in organizational culture will appear to be a bottom-up process. Over time, however, culture becomes stable and institutionalized. Formative events that were salient during emergence become the stuff of myth, legend, and tradition. Founding members move on. New members are socialized and assimilated into enduring contexts that resist change. Therefore,organizational culture appears to have a top-down influence on lower-level units.

The distinction between the two perspectives just sketched does not have to do with which one represents the "true" model of organizational culture; both are veridical. A variety of factors and processes can influence the apparent direction, top-down or bottom-up, of a cross-level process. This illustrates the necessity for the theorist to explicitly specify the temporal assumptions for the phenomenon in question. Thus time may serve as a boundary condition for the model; for example, the theorist states that the model applies only to mature organizations, or only to new ones. Alternatively, in a theoretical model, time may serve as a moderator of the phenomenon; for example, the theorist posits that the direction (top-down or bottom-up) and effects of the phenomenon vary as a function of the organization's maturity.

Principle: The temporal scope, as well as the point in the life cycle of a social entity,affect the apparent origin and direction of many phenomena in such a way that they may appear variously top-down, bottom-up, or both. Theory must explicitly specify its temporal reference points.

Time-scale variations across levels. Differences in time scales affect the nature of links among levels. Lower-level phenomena tend to have more rapid dynamics than higher-level and emergent phenomena, which makes it is easier to detect change in lower-level entities. This is one reason why top-down models predominate in the literature. For example, efforts to improve organizational outcomes (for example,quality) through training (for example, total-quality management, or TQM) assume emergent effects that originate at the individual level. Models of training effectiveness focus on the transfer of trained skills to the performance setting. Higher-level contextual support enhances transfer in such a way that the effects of TQM training on quality are relatively immediate. However, the effect of individual-level TQM training on organizational outcomes is emergent and requires a much longer time scale. Individual cognition,attitudes, and behaviors must combine through social and work interactions. Depending on the nature of the vertical transfer process, individual outcomes will compose or compile to the group level and, over longer time frames, will yield organizational outcomes. Thus contextual or top-down linkages can be manifest within short time frames, whereas emergent, bottom-up linkages necessitate longer time frames.

Principle: Time-scale differences allow top-down effects on lower levels to manifest quickly. Bottom-up emergent effects manifest over longer periods. Research designs must be sensitive to the temporal requirements of theory.

One implication of this effect of time scale is that phenomena at different levels may manifest at different points in time. For example, Kozlowski and his colleagues have proposed that team performance compiles and emerges across levels, from individuals to dyads to teams, at different points in the team-development process. Others, in related fashion, have noted that level of a relationship in a multilevel model- homogeneous groups, heterogeneous groups, or independent individuals-can be influenced by factors that, over time, change the level of the relationship.

Entrainment: changing linkages over time. The term entrainment refers to the rhythm,pacing, and synchronicity of processes that link different levels. Coupling across levels or units is tightened during periods of greater entrainment. Entrainment is affected by task cycles and work flows, budget cycles, and other temporally structured events that pace organizational life.For example, the concept of entrainment has been used in the group and team performance literature to capture the idea that work-flow interdependence is not necessarily uniform over time; rather, the degree of interdependence or coupling can vary significantly depending on the timing of events or acts that require a synchronous and coordinated response. Thus levels or units that ordinarily are loosely coupled will be tightly coupled during periods of synchronicity.

Accordingly, entrainment processes must be considered during theory construction.Further, entrainment has rather obvious implications for research designs that intend to capture entrained processes. At some points in the cycle, two entities or levels may be tightly coupled or entrained, whereas at other points they will be decoupled and will appear independent. This variability creates demands for precise theory and measurement in order to capture the coupling; data collection must be sensitive to entrainment cycles and periods.

Principle: Entrainment can tightly couple phenomena that ordinarily are only loosely coupled across levels. Theories that address entrained phenomena must specify appropriate time cycles and must employ those cycles to structure research designs.

Why and Why Not?

Argument by assertion is invariably a poor strategy for theory building. Argument by logical analysis and persuasion-argument that explains why-is always preferable. In multilevel theory building, explaining why is not merely preferable but essential. A great deal of organizational multilevel theory building spans organizational subdisciplines(industrial/organizational psychology and organizational theory, for example). Therefore,the unstated assumptions in a multilevel theory may be obvious to the members of one subdiscipline but not to the members of another, who are also interested in the new multilevel theory. Furthermore, multilevel theories often incorporate novel constructs (for example, team mental models, or organizational learning). The meaning of such constructs may well be obscured in the absence of thorough explanations concerning why. Finally, multilevel data analysis has been the subject of considerable and continuous debate. Conflicts regarding the best way to analyze multilevel models abate considerably, however, in the presence of carefully and fully explicated theoretical models that make the choice of analytical strategy clear. Thus multilevel theorists must not only specify what, how, where, and when but also why: Why are relationships in the model conceptualized as top-down rather than bottom-up? Why are constructs conceptualized as compositional rather than compilational? Why are predictors assumed to have immediate rather than long-term consequences for the outcomes of interest?

Nearly as important as the question of why, and perhaps even more interesting, is the question of why not. Why might bottom-up processes not yield a group-level property?That is, why might members' perceptions not converge to form a shared unit norm or climate? Why might top-down processes not constrain relationships.

In an organizational subunit? Why might predictors, hypothesized to be influential over time, prove instead to have immediate consequences? In exploring why not, theorists may refine their models, incorporating important insights and nuances. This adds diversity and depth to theory; it is how a science is built.

Principle: Multilevel theoretical models must provide a detailed explanation of the assumptions undergirding the model. Such explanations should answer not only the question of why but also the question of why not.

In sum, rigorous multilevel theories must carefully consider what, how, where, when,why, and why not. In what follows, we explicate how these basic questions inform the definition and measurement of constructs in multilevel models. We then describe distinctive forms or frameworks that multilevel models may take, the kinds of research designs and samples necessary to test multilevel models, and possible data analytic strategies.

Constructs in Multilevel Theory

Construct level and origin. Constructs are the building blocks of organizational theory. A construct is an abstraction used to explain an apparent phenomenon. The level of a construct is the level at which it is hypothesized to be manifest in a given theoretical model-the known or predicted level of the phenomenon in question. Although organizational theorists have often discussed "the level of theory," we prefer to use the phrase level of the construct because mixed-level models, by definition, include constructs that span multiple levels; that is, generalizations are constrained by the level of the endogenous construct ("the level of the theory"), but other constructs in a model may be at higher or lower levels. Thus, in mixed-level research, the theoretical explanation will span several levels in the effort to understand an endogenous construct at a given focal level.

The first and foremost task in crafting a multilevel theory or study is to define, justify,and explain the level of each focal construct that constitutes the theoretical system.Remarkably, the level of many organizational constructs is unclear. This problem, we have noted, once plagued the climate literature. Researchers and critics asked whether climate was to be conceptualized and measured as an organizational (unit) construct or as a psychological (individual) one. Climate researchers resolved this question,differentiating explicitly between a consensual unit climate and its origins in psychological climate. However, the question of level is often unasked in other research.Consider the familiar construct of worker participation. What is its level? Is worker participation an individual-level phenomenon, describing the influence an individual exerts in unit decisions? Or is worker participation at the unit level, describing a set of formal structures and work practices (for example, quality circles) characteristic of units,not individuals? For the most part, the participation literature reveals neither clear consensus regarding the level of the construct nor explicit discussion of its level.

Principle: The theorist should explicitly specify the level of each construct in a theoretical system.

In specifying the level of a construct, the theorist must build a targeted theory, or "minitheory," of the phenomenon, explicating where, when, and how the construct forms and is manifest. Many phenomena we study in organizations have their theoretical origins in the cognition, affect, and behavior of individuals but emerge, through compositional or compilational processes, to manifest as higher-level phenomena. A given construct may be an individual-level construct in some circumstances and a unit-level construct in others. When a theorist specifies that a construct originates at the individual level and manifests at a higher level, the theorist must explicate when, how,and why this process occurs. The theoretical foundation for emergent effects must be at the level of origin. When psychological and social-psychological phenomena are emergent at higher levels, the researcher needs to distinguish the level of theoretical origin and the level at which the focal construct is manifest-the level of the construct.The researcher must also explain the theoretical process that yields higher-level emergence-the conditions in which the higher-level construct exists or does not exist.This is essential to determining an appropriate means of assessing and representing the emergent higher-level construct.

Principle: When higher-level constructs are based on emergent processes, the level of origin, the level of the construct, and the nature of the emergent process must be explicitly specified by the theory