The case for methodological pluralism in construction
management research
In charting the history of pluralism, Mingers (1997: 3) notes that philosophers such
as Hanson, Kuhn and Popper demonstrated flaws in the cornerstones of induction,
and theory- and observer-independent observation. He argues that in social science,
this legitimated the emergence of the various schools of interpretivism such as
phenomenology and hermeneutics. He also notes that similar trends emerged in
management science in the 1980s with the emergence of soft systems methodology
(SSM) and other soft operations research (OR) approaches. It was through the
challenge to the positivist orthodoxy by the emergence of phenomenological and
structuralist epistemological positions that the new perspective of ‘methodological
pluralism’ emerged.
The basic principle of methodological pluralism is that the use of multiple theoretical
models and multiple methodological approaches is both legitimate and desirable if
established models and understandings are to be questioned and knowledge
furthered. Adopting the principles of methodological pluralism does not render the
choice of method arbitrary, but emphasises the context-sensitivity inherent in research
design. Indeed, many researchers argue that quantitative methods should be combined
because theory building required ‘hard’ data for uncovering relationships and
‘soft’ data for explaining them (see Loosemore et al., 1996)