The Etiology of the Multilevel Paradigm in Management Research

As initially spawned through the meso movement in organizational behavior, the multilevel paradigm has permeated virtually every subdiscipline of management. The authors review its evolution from different disciplinary origins in terms of theory, measurement and construct validity, and design and analysis. They illustrate that although its origins are disparate and multidisciplinary, the modern-day multilevel paradigm is coherent and well entrenched in modern management research. They then raise five challenges to the current paradigm in terms of the following: first, the ambiguities surrounding the units of inquiry; second, the violations of the nesting assumption; third, the need to integrate the nested-arrangements approach with the longitudinal approach; fourth, the challenges associated with modeling current and future multilevel models; and, fifth, the role of multidisciplinary influences for multilevel management theory and investigations. Their hope is that this article will spark a paradigm shift in multilevel management research.