Multilevel Modeling

As scholars of human behavior in organizations, industrial and organizational psychologists often find themselves trying to understand phenomena that are inherently nested, hierarchical, and multilevel. From private industry to universities to the military to nearly all forms of government, organizations comprise hierarchical structures that loosely resemble pyramids (even if the structures resemble flat pyramids, they are still hierarchical).

[Page 982]Consider a large chain of department stores: Individual employees are nested within different departments (e.g., sporting goods, men’s clothing, women’s clothing), which are in turn nested within a store in a particular location, which is in turn nested within the overall organization. In this example, influences and consequences occur at the individual, department, store, and organizational levels of analysis, including relationships that cross these levels. Furthermore, the ...