Mixing Methods

Abstract

Having explained why methodological pluralism is valuable, and having shown just a little of the great variety of methodologies and methods that are available for the systemic interventionist to learn from and draw upon (Chapter 9), I can now present a strategy for selecting and mixing methods in practice. This was a strategy that I began developing in the late 1980s (Midgley, 1988, 1989a, 1990a; Midgley and Floyd, 1988, 1990) when Critical Systems Thinking (CST) was first coalescing into an identifiable perspective, and then I altered it somewhat in the mid-1990s when CST was revisioned (Midgley, 1997b) (see towards the end of Chapter 9 for a discussion of the revisioning of CST).