This editorial essay, penned by Cowen, Rink, Cuypers, Grégorie, and Weller (2022) and published in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), offers an in-depth examination of the opportunities and challenges inherent in bridging macro and micro domains within management research. The authors, drawing on their collective experience as associate editors at AMJ, emphasize the critical value of such boundary-spanning work, arguing that it is essential for comprehending and addressing complex management and societal issues, ranging from organizational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic to tackling increasing economic inequality. By integrating perspectives on how individual and organizational actions intersect across these levels, researchers can foster a deeper understanding of complex challenges and develop more effective solutions. The burgeoning microfoundations movement in organization theory and strategy research further underscores the substantial theoretical and practical contributions that arise from these integrated approaches.
As a prominent management journal, AMJ actively seeks and receives numerous manuscripts that aim to bridge macro and micro traditions. The diverse research orientations within AMJ’s editorial team and review board uniquely position the journal to support, develop, and disseminate such empirical work. However, the authors observe recurrent theoretical challenges that frequently impede the progress of these manuscripts through the review process. While some challenges are methodological, many are fundamentally theoretical, often hindering papers from fully realizing the value of integrating macro and micro approaches. This editorial is explicitly designed to facilitate the success and impact of authors engaged in cross-level research by highlighting these common theoretical pitfalls and offering practical solutions.
The central conceptual framework employed in this essay is Coleman’s (1990) “boat”, which serves as an organizing mechanism for understanding and theorizing macro–micro linkages. This framework posits that human agents play a crucial role in explaining macro-level associations and outlines four key elements to craft a robust, integrated theory:
- Macro-level associations (Arrow 4): Represented at the top of the “boat,” this arrow signifies causal claims about relationships between characteristics and outcomes at the macro level (e.g., organizational capabilities and firm performance). Crucially, this arrow is dotted to indicate that such associations are often theoretically incomplete without considering the underlying micro processes. The “macro level” typically refers to an aggregate social entity like an organization, industry, or economy.
- Micro-level action-formation mechanisms (Arrow 2): Located at the bottom of the “boat,” this represents the micro level of analysis, focusing on the factors and dynamics that influence individuals’ affect, behavior, choices, and cognition (e.g., how individual skills and beliefs affect effort or creativity).
- Situational mechanisms (Arrow 1): This “macro-to-micro” arrow illustrates how macro-level factors or artifacts influence individual affect, behavior, choices, cognition, decisions, preferences, or values. It fundamentally contextualizes micro-level phenomena; for instance, examining how corporate inventors’ efforts might be shaped by organizational incentive schemes.
- Transformational mechanisms (Arrow 3): This “micro-to-macro” arrow demonstrates how the aggregation of micro-level phenomena comes to explain observations at higher levels of analysis. An example includes how managers’ leadership by example, through mechanisms like employee engagement, “translates” into employee behaviors that yield positive store-level outcomes like productivity and service quality.
Coleman’s framework is highly flexible, allowing for various definitions of “macro” and “micro,” and its mechanisms can also be applied to develop theory connecting meso-level dynamics to both micro and macro levels. Beyond merely motivating microfoundations research, it illuminates opportunities for bridging macro and micro research in both directions (Arrows 1 and 3) and guides the identification of key theoretical elements for successful cross-level connections.
The editorial identifies three primary theoretical pitfalls that commonly arise in cross-boundary submissions to AMJ, along with potential solutions:
- Multilevel Methods versus Multilevel Theory:
- The Challenge: A frequent issue is manuscripts making ambitious claims about boundary spanning, where the empirical methods (e.g., using a mix of macro and micro variables, clustered standard errors, random effects, or fixed effects estimations) serve as the sole “bridge” between levels, rather than robust theoretical arguments. Authors often fail to develop the theoretical rationale underpinning their methods or to draw strong conclusions about findings, particularly neglecting the theoretical mechanisms for situational (Arrow 1) and transformational (Arrow 3) dynamics.
- The Solution: A more complete theoretical story is required. If the focus is on micro-level dynamics, authors must specify the situational mechanisms (Arrow 1), explaining why, when, and how a macro-level construct impacts individual perceptions, cognitions, emotions, or decisions. This involves developing theory about how context shapes micro-level associations, rather than simply adding control variables. For phenomena focused on micro-to-macro dynamics, the integration of micro-level variables must align with the development of theoretical aggregation mechanisms (Arrow 3). For example, McNamara, Haleblian, and Dykes (2008) carefully elucidated micro-level theoretical mechanisms, such as institutional and competitive bandwagons, to explain a macro-level outcome like acquisition returns.
- Misapplication of Micro Theory:
- The Challenge: Scholars often rely on micro-level theories to explain individual psychological responses (Arrow 2) and their impact on organizational outcomes (Arrow 3). However, an oversimplified application or a lack of appreciation for the complexity and nuances of these theories can lead to misconceptions and limit the effectiveness of boundary-spanning work.
- Illustrative Examples:
- Psychological Identity Theorizing: While social identity theory effectively explains intergroup and intragroup behavior, misapplications can arise from overlooking later extensions, such as the role of “category fit” in determining the salience of different social referent categories in the broader macro context. Similarly, anthropomorphizing organizations (humanizing them) by borrowing individual identity concepts can be productive but risky if it bypasses the necessary theorizing about aggregation mechanisms.
- Individual-level Dispositional Constructs: Concepts like narcissism or extraversion, presumed stable traits in psychology, are sometimes measured in management research in ways that do not capture their innateness (e.g., through priming or single-episode inferences). It’s crucial in cross-level research to deliberately distinguish between trait effects (stable behaviors) and state effects (dynamic behavioral displays) and describe them accurately.
- Imprinting: This concept, applied at multiple levels, describes how behavioral patterns adopted during critical transitions persist. Cross-boundary research (e.g., how CEO decision-making is shaped by early economic experiences) must acknowledge that imprinting typically occurs during developmental phases, but also that individuals can acquire new imprints at multiple points, including adulthood, and be influenced by intersecting imprints. Meaningful research explicitly demonstrates how contextual and intrapersonal processes operate in tandem.
- CEO and Board Functioning: While examining individual CEO/director characteristics and board composition through a psychological lens has been positive, micro-level theory suggests that relational dynamics within a boardroom are often more directly a function of relational quality and information elaboration among main actors, rather than solely attributable to individual demographic features or cognitions. Researchers must be intentional about theoretically and empirically establishing the specific cognitive and/or relational mechanisms at play to avoid misattributions.
- Nuanced Contextualization of Micro Theories:
- The Challenge: Micro-oriented scholars sometimes overlook the nuanced influence of different macro-level contextual factors on psychological processes (Arrow 1). Studies might examine a single, proximal context factor using abstract simulations or experimental methods, resulting in findings that appear too detached from complex organizational realities to be meaningful in real-world management settings.
- The Solution: Integrate macro influences in a more nuanced way. This includes considering situational factors that create opportunities or constrain behavior, and recognizing that individuals’ actions are often determined by a combination of different contexts.
- Illustrative Examples:
- Responses to Change: While Lewin’s (1951) classic psychological change model has predictive power, it cannot be applied universally due to significant response variation. More nuanced approaches, such as Sonenshein’s (2010) study, show that enabling factors like simultaneous communication processes between managers and employees can increase successful strategic change implementation by allowing employees to personalize the change discourse.
- Diversity Interventions: Macro-level diversity initiatives can have unintended negative outcomes when lower-level contextual constraints (e.g., supervisors not valuing the programs) compromise the position of disadvantaged employees at the department or team level.
- Organizational Risk-Taking: Shimizu (2007) reconciled seemingly opposing views on risk-taking (prospect theory, behavioral theory of the firm, threat-rigidity) by demonstrating that a combination of individual and organizational factors influences the unique mechanisms underlying each view, highlighting the need for nuanced theorizing that recognizes multiple contextual influences.
- Outcome: Greater consideration of how macro-level contextual characteristics reinforce or constrain micro processes can help explain inconsistent prior findings, offer more relevant guidance for organizational practice, and cross-fertilize the micro literature by introducing new contingency factors.
- Aggregation Mechanisms:
- The Challenge: Despite its centrality to microfoundations research, aggregation (the micro-to-macro transition, Arrow 3) is rarely studied theoretically, representing a significant omission. The principle of reducibility demands a clear aggregation logic that models how micro-level behaviors and interactions produce the macro-level outcome. The problem of “equifinality”—where various mechanisms can yield the same outcome—makes it difficult to identify the specific aggregation mechanism from the macro-level outcome alone. Macro-level actions are inherently social and influenced by individual interactions and situational factors, raising the question of how micro-level dynamics “sum up” to produce macro-level effects. Theories relying on individual-level assumptions risk being theoretically incomplete without incorporating an aggregation process. For instance, Pasca and Poggio (2021) documented individual biases in environmental impact perception but did not explore the bottom-up aggregation to collective outcomes.
- The Solution: Authors are encouraged to both theorize and empirically document aggregation mechanisms. Research at the “meso” level (e.g., team-level research) has often tackled these issues effectively. Hale, Ployhart, and Shepherd (2016) provide a strong example by developing the aggregation logic underpinning their theoretical model of collective turnover, postulating that change events disrupt collective states and processes, shaped by member interdependence. Their work illustrates the kind of theoretical and methodological efforts needed to advance understanding of bottom-up transformational mechanisms linking micro-level dynamics with macro-level phenomena.
- Call to Action: Authors should make aggregation an integral part of their theorizing, explicitly teasing out the diverse ways in which it can occur. This offers significant opportunities for both macro and micro researchers to enhance their theoretical contributions by extending micro theories and offering insights into important collective or organizational outcomes.
In conclusion, the editorial reiterates that cross-level research holds immense promise for advancing both management scholarship and practice. The authors advocate for new approaches to doctoral education and research collaborations, promoting training that exposes students to both macro and micro domain theories, building cross-level theorizing skills, and forming coauthor teams composed of researchers from both traditions. By actively engaging with the theoretical nuances inherent in cross-boundary research, authors can lay the groundwork for robust theoretical contributions and achieve a stronger practical impact.
Reference: Cowen, A. P., Rink, F., Cuypers, I. R. P., Grégorie, D. A., & Weller, I. (2022). Applying Coleman’s boat in management research: Opportunities and challenges in bridging macro and micro theory. Academy of Management Journal, 65(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2022.4001
