Beyond Collective Entities: Multilevel Research on Organizational Routines and Capabilities

Organizational routines and capabilities are thorny constructs, but their complexity has been largely underappreciated. In this article, the authors illustrate how new and more complex understandings of organizational routines and capabilities can be generated. They do so by breaking them into parts and mapping their interrelationships. Because component parts of routines and capabilities exist at different levels of analysis, the proposal to investigate their multiple relationships contributes to bridging the micro-macro divide in management. Specifically, the authors show how new analytical and methodological techniques can catalyze future research.