Unpacking multimethodology: impacts of a community development intervention

Abstract

Multimethodology interventions are being increasingly employed by operational researchers to cope with the complexity of real-world problems. In keeping with recent calls for more research into the ‘realised’ impacts of multimethodology, we present a detailed account of an intervention to support the planning of business ideas by a management team working in a community development context. Drawing on the rich steam of data gathered during the intervention, we identify a range of cognitive, task and relational impacts experienced by the management team during the intervention. These impacts are the basis for developing a process model that accounts for the personal, social and material changes reported by those involved in the intervention. The model explains how the intervention's analytic and relational capabilities incentivise the interplay of participants’ decision making efforts and integrative behaviours underpinning reported intervention impacts and change. Our findings add much needed empirical case material to enrich further our understanding of the realised impacts of operational research interventions in general, and of multimethodology interventions in particular.