Comparative organizational analysis across multiple levels: A set-theoretic approach

The contrast of multilevel and comparative research may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, one might argue that comparative research on organizations by necessity spans several levels of analysis (Rokkan, 1966). Yet, multilevel and comparative research on organizations present rather distinct traditions in organization studies, each with its own epistemological assumptions and associated methods. Accordingly, an approach that aims to incorporate both multilevel and comparative ideas needs to start with taking inventory of these prior literatures to situate itself. In the following, we thus turn to the literatures on multilevel and comparative research as different traditions with surprisingly little overlap.