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Conceptualizing trust alone or as the starting point for understanding both trust and distrust is insufficient. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the construction of phenotypic trustscapes and distrustscapes that permit an abstract exploration of the concepts of trust and distrust using societal and dyadic relationships and perceptions of the individual as the units of analysis. For theoretical understanding of trust and distrust, it uses social and evolutionary biologic multi-level theory. This chapter builds on the existing trust literature in three ways: (1) by triangulating on trust and distrust through the use of a number of research methodologies; (2) by placing trust and distrust in value orientation theory and models; and (3) by extricating trust and distrust from reciprocity constructs, and placing them into separate phenotypes: trustscapes and distrustscapes. These efforts show that both trust and distrust are naturally occurring phenomena, with one or the other predominant in specific contexts. The chapter includes scenarios in Japan, Bulgaria, and Indonesia to demonstrate how micro- and macro-level examples of trustscapes and distrustscapes function.

Agars, Kaufman, and Locke's (this volume) review of social influence within the creativity and innovation literature provides an introduction to multi-level issues within creativity research. Their chapter reveals that relevant social influences may differ by level, relevant domain characteristics may not hold across other domains, and creativity may be influenced differently than innovation. Building on Agars et al.'s work, this commentary offers several suggestions pertaining to multi-level research as a means of advancing creativity research, specifically as it relates to social influence. Suggestions for future research include consideration of levels-based boundaries within theoretical construct development, employment of a bracketing technique to review construct implications at levels above and below the construct of interest, and improvement in multi-level modeling of particular social influence and/or creative processes that are non-linear in nature.

Empathy, or the process of feeling or knowing how another feels, is a critical component of social interactions, and may be of particular importance to organizational functioning. This chapter addresses a literature gap on empathy in organizational contexts by providing a review of empathy research in a management setting.

We integrate the developing field of empathy research and provide a conceptual framework built on Ashkanasy’s (2003) five levels of analysis in emotions research, emphasizing within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group-level, and organization-level processes.

Our model addresses the complaint that empathy definitions are not consistent by illustrating how the level of analysis alters the view of empathy’s role in organizations.

This multi-level model of empathy provides a framework to identify gaps in the empathy literature and make recommendations for future research.

This new model of empathy will help practitioners use and understand empathy by providing a structure of how empathy is manifested in organizational settings.

The field of empathy research has been limited by inconsistent definitions and a lack of a model that outlines how empathy is used in organizations. This multi-level model of empathy provides the necessary framework for researchers and practitioners to advance the research and practice of empathy in organizations.

Entrepreneurship research has grown in both quality and quantity over the past decade, as many theoretical innovations and important empirical research findings have been introduced to the field. However, theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurship remain fragmented, and empirical findings are unstable across different contexts. This chapter describes features of a multi-level process view of new venture emergence that adds coherence to the entrepreneurship theory jungle and brings order to idiosyncratic empirical results, by explaining how ideas become organized into new ventures. The centerpiece of this effort is enactment theory, a general process approach specifically developed to explain organizing processes. Enactment theory – and Campbellian evolutionary theorizing more generally – has a long history of use within and across multiple levels of analysis. Consequently, the description here illustrates how organizing unfolds across multiple levels of analysis and multiple phases of development. After describing the theorizing assumptions and multi-level process view of new venture organizing, the chapter explores implications of applying this perspective by suggesting new research directions and interpretations of prior work. The aim is to advocate process theorizing as a more productive approach to understanding new venture emergence.

Multi-Level Issues in Organizational Behavior and Leadership is Volume 8 of Research in Multi-Level Issues, an annual series that provides an outlet for the discussion of multi-level problems and solutions across a variety of fields of study. Using a scientific debate format of a key scholarly essay followed by commentaries and a rebuttal, we present, in this series, theoretical work, significant empirical studies, methodological developments, analytical techniques, and philosophical treatments to advance the field of multi-level studies, regardless of disciplinary perspective.

“Multi-Level Issues in Organizations and Time” is Volume 6 of Research in Multi-Level Issues, an annual series that provides an outlet for the discussion of multi-level problems and solutions across a variety of fields of study. Using a scientific debate format of a key scholarly essay followed by two commentaries and a rebuttal, we present, in this series, theoretical work, significant empirical studies, methodological developments, analytical techniques, and philosophical treatments to advance the field of multi-level studies, regardless of disciplinary perspective.

Cannella and Holcomb ((this volume). In: F. Dansereau & F. J. Yammarino (Eds), Research in multi-level issues (Vol. 4). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science) are unconvinced that top management teams (TMTs) are the appropriate level of analysis for upper echelons research and are, accordingly, unenthusiastic about the promise of multi-level analysis for research of this type. We agree and discuss (1) the fragility of agency theory as it pertains to TMT research, (2) various issues pertaining to TMT turnover (or lack thereof), (3) paradoxes in practice and theory regarding TMT homogeneity/heterogeneity, (4) the absence of boards of directors in the upper echelons perspective, and (5) the implications of these issues on the theory/conceptualization of TMTs and of the research dedicated to them. We question whether the variables, as currently configured, relied on in this literature are sufficiently developed to adequately test an upper echelons perspective, or to sensibly warrant a multi-level analytical approach.

This study aims to “bridge” two streams of HRM research: organisation level research on HRM and performance and individual level research on employee work perceptions and behavioural performance. This study seeks to analyse the value of organisation level HRM practices for individual level employees' assessment of the degree of violation of their psychological contracts. It also aims to examine the contribution of commitment HRM practices and traditional HRM practices in explaining perceptions of psychological contract violation.

Based on a sample of 49 organisations with 2,099 individual respondents, the paper analyses the relationship between organisation level HRM practices and individual level employees' assessment of the degree of violation of their psychological contracts, using multi‐level analysis.

The findings show a clear positive influence of a number of HRM practices. More use of HRM practices leads to lower levels of perceived psychological contract violation for individual employees, regardless of individual characteristics. Commitment HRM practices explain about half of the variance in psychological contract violation that is due to the total amount of HRM practices.

A limitation of the study is its cross‐sectional design and the measure of HRM practices, indicating more or less explicit attention for HRM in an organization, but not possible substitutable and synergetic effects between various HRM practices. Further research should therefore explore the effect of combinations of HRM practices. Findings however do indicate the relevance of organization level HRM for individual level perceptions of the employment relationship.

It is in the interest of managers to have a clear knowledge of which organisational activities will elicit those attitudes and behaviours necessary to achieve organisational goals. These findings highlight the importance of HRM practices to contribute to employees' realistic assessment of the mutual demands of their employment relationship with their organization. The more HRM practices the better in terms of employees' psychological contract violation. Furthermore, the findings show the importance of commitment HRM practices, but also the remaining relevance of more traditional practices.

This study combines insights on organisation level HRM with insights on individual level psychological contracts. Although the necessity of using multi‐level analysis in these kinds of studies has been argued by various researchers, this study is one of the first to use this analytical technique, thus genuinely showing the impact of organizational level HRM practices on individual level HR outcomes (in this case the psychological contract).

Despite the recent extending research on knowledge hiding, there is still scant research on social stressor phenomena-related contextual antecedent factors and new cognitive mechanisms of knowledge hiding behaviors. To shed new light on this unexplored gap, this research explores the multi-level moderated mediation model that examines how and when negative gossip experienced by targets in the workplace induces their knowledge hiding from coworkers drawing from the lens of social learning and cognitive theories. More specifically, this study aims to evaluate the relationship between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding via moral disengagement, and this mediation effect is also moderated by team relational conflict as a novel boundary condition.

This study collected multi-wave 338 employees’ data from 68 teams of cross-sectional industries in China, which were nested within teams. The collected nested nature data were analyzed by employing multi-level analysis based on hierarchical linear modeling.

The results suggested that negative workplace gossip first triggers moral disengagement and thereby, leads to knowledge hiding. Furthermore, the direct positive association between negative workplace gossip and moral disengagement was strengthened by increasing intra-team relational conflict. In addition, the mediation effect of moral disengagement between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding was also strengthened through increasing intra-team relational conflict.

This study first empirically examines the multi-level model using a new underlying mechanism (moral disengagement) and team-level boundary condition (relational conflict) and enriches the current literature on knowledge management and workplace gossip. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings and future research lines are also discussed, which will facilitate practitioners and academicians to curb counterproductive knowledge behavior.

“Multi-Level Issues in Organizational Behavior and Processes” is Volume 3 of Research in Multi-Level Issues, an annual series that provides an outlet for the discussion of multi-level problems and solutions across a variety of fields of study. Using a scientific debate format of a key scholarly essay followed by two commentaries and a rebuttal, we present, in this series, theoretical work, significant empirical studies, methodological developments, analytical techniques, and philosophical treatments to advance the field of multi-level studies, regardless of disciplinary perspective.