Towards a multimethodology in health care – synergies between Soft Systems Methodology and Discrete Event Simulation

Abstract

Multimethodology is the combination of methodologies, often from different paradigms. While methodologies from hard paradigms are rather positivist and treats the organizational world as objective, methodologies from soft paradigms are interpretivist by nature. Some argue that these paradigms are incommensurable and multimethodology is therefore a challenging research field. However, we believe this is possible within a pragmatic paradigm. In this article, a multimethodology combining Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is developed and tested at a Norwegian Hospital. The initial phases of the multimethodology anchored the project with the staff by basing the DES-model on their narratives. This phase also revealed real-world mechanisms vital to the DES-modelling. During later SSM-steps, the DES-model was used to detect possible areas of improvement. Our findings were well received by the hospital. Our work shows how soft and hard methodologies yield synergies when they are carefully brought together in a pragmatic fashion.

Keywords:

• operational research
• multimetodology
• Soft Systems Methodology
• Discrete Event Simulation
• surgery optimization