In organisational research, taking a mixed methods approach offers strong potential for studying employee experiences, leadership, and workplace culture. For example, when examining employee engagement, a researcher might begin with quantitative surveys assessing job satisfaction and productivity, then follow up with qualitative interviews or focus groups to explore the underlying drivers of those metrics—such as leadership communication, group dynamics, teamwork, and individual values.

Organisational phenomena are multi-level, complicated, and continuously changing (Chan, 1998; Humphrey & LeBreton, 2019; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). Despite being widely recognised across management and organisation studies (Hitt et al., 2007; Mathieu & Chen, 2011; Molloy et al, 2011), research continues to seperate perspectives of macro-, meso-, and micro-level framing under the assumption that theory and analysis can exist comfortably within an isolated level (Hernaus et al., 2020). Consider organisational culture, which has been defined as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions… taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel” (Schein, 2010, p. 18). Often conceived as a macro-level construct, culture develops from the enactments from a team or department (meso), but is frequently conceptualised, measured, and examined through individual perceptions (micro), creating a misalignment between theory, measurement, and analysis frame (Molina-Azorín et al., 2020).

The multilevel nature of workplace phenomena has been recognised for some time in disciplines such as organisational psychology, behaviour, and human resource management with the development of multilevel statistical analysis of the workplace (Aguinis et al., 2011; Aguinis & Molina-Azorín, 2015; Preacher et al., 2010). Similarly, macro disciplines such as strategic management and organisation theory have also adopted multilevel designs. Yet many areas in the organisational sciences (despite recent methodological and theoretical advances in disciplines such as psychology, behaviour management, and organisation science review, e.g., Humphrey & LeBreton, 2019; O’Connell et al., 2022 related to multilevel designs) still does not contain rigorous quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods research that recognises the complexity and interdependent nature of workplace life.

To facilitate this, analytic advances from health services research can be paired with mixed methods, or qualitative methods, as in conducting observations at different levels of an organisation (Hall et al., 2018). This is important because it could provide additional insights into how interventions operate and develop within organisational contexts. Aguinis and Molina-Azorín (2015) note that there is significant promise for mixed-methods multilevel research to enhance the integration of theory and empirical evidence into multilevel designs. Mixed-methods designs are models that integrate both qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop rich insights into the complex nature of organisational phenomena (Headley & Plano Clark, 2020).