Dealing with Challenges to Methodological Pluralism: The Paradigm Problem, Psychological Resistance and Cultural Barriers

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: G. Midgley, J. D. Nicholson, and R. Brennan, "Dealing with challenges to methodological pluralism: The paradigm problem, psychological resistance and cultural barriers", Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 62: 150-159, April 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.08.008. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 14 October 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .This paper calls for methodological pluralism in industrial marketing research. We discuss three challenges that proponents of methodological pluralism have to address if their practice is to be seen as credible: the paradigm problem; psychological resistance; and lack of cultural readiness to accept pluralism. We review the works of a variety of authors from other disciplines who have tackled these problems, and identify useful ideas to take forward into a model of learning. This addresses the paradigm problem by making it clear that no pluralist methodology can exist without making its own paradigmatic assumptions. It deals with psychological resistance by talking in terms of learning, starting from wherever the researcher is currently situated (a large knowledge base is not needed to begin practicing methodological pluralism). However, this model does not deal with the question of whether the time is right, culturally, for methodological pluralism. We argue that the time will be right when it is widely appreciated that methodological pluralism adds value to industrial marketing research practice. The next step for our research community must be the accumulation of a body of empirical evidence to demonstrate that this added value does or does not exist.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio