A balancing act: How organizations pursue consistency in routine functioning in the face of ongoing change.

The purpose of this article is to present cutting-edge research on issues relating to the theory, design, and analysis of change. Rather than a highly technical review, our goal is to provide management scholars with a relatively nontechnical single source useful for helping them develop and evaluate longitudinal research. Toward that end, we provide readers with “checklists” of issues to consider when theorizing and designing a longitudinal study. We also discuss the trade-offs among analytic strategies (repeated measures general linear model, random coefficient modeling, and latent growth modeling), circumstances in which such methods are most appropriate, and ways to analyze data when one is using each approach.

In this article, the authors illustrate how random coefficient modeling can be used to develop growth models for the analysis of longitudinal data. In contrast to previous discussions of random coefficient models, this article provides step-by-step guidance using a model comparison framework. By approaching the modeling this way, the authors are able to build off a regression foundation and progressively estimate and evaluate more complex models. In the model comparison framework, the article illustrates the value of using likelihood tests to contrast alternative models (rather than the typical reliance on tests of significance involving individual parameters), and it provides code in the open-source language R to allow readers to replicate the results. The article concludes with practical guidelines for estimating growth models.

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Drawing on a multilevel model of motivation in work groups and a functionalist perspective of citizenship and socially responsible behaviors, we developed and tested a multilevel model of voluntary workplace green behavior that explicates some of the reasons why employees voluntarily engage in green behavior at work. For a sample of 325 office workers organized into 80 work groups in three firms, we found that conscientiousness and moral reflectiveness were associated with the voluntary workplace green behavior of group leaders and individual group members. Furthermore, we found a direct relationship between leader green behavior and the green behavior of individual subordinates as well as an indirect relationship mediated by green advocacy within work groups. Our theory and findings shed new light on the psychological and social conditions and processes that shape voluntary workplace green behavior in organizational settings and suggest implications for organizations striving to improve their social responsibility and environmental sustainability.