The construction management research community has an interesting history when it comes to debating the merits and demerits of different theoretical and philosophical perspectives on methodologies from different research paradigms. Concerns at the apparent dominance of positivism and the role of theory in construction management research in the mid-1990s led to a philosophical debate in the journal Construction Management and Economics. This debate was initiated by two papers in particular (Seymour and Rooke, 1995; Seymour et al., 1997), which questioned the dominance of the rationalist position which seemingly underpinned most research within the community, suggesting that this tacitly endorsed the very attitudes in need of change in the industry. They suggested that the culture of research must change if researchers were to have an influence on the industry. In responding to Betts and Lansley’s (1993) review of the first ten years of the Journal, Seymour et al. (1997) further questioned the dominance of the scientific theorising associated with realist ontological and epistemological positions, given that the ¡¥object¡¦ of most construction management research is people. This suggested that the construction management discipline underestimated the interpretive process. These papers invoked a vigorous and somewhat polarised response around the relative merits of different research approaches.