99 3 Methodological Pluralism: An Emerging Paradigmatic Approach to Information Systems Research Aminah Zawedde1, Jude Lubega2, Saul Kidde1, and Irene Nakiyimba1 Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Makerere University, P. O. Box 7062 Kampala, Uganda {sazawedde; jlubega; skidde; inakiyimba}@cit.mak.ac.ug 1: PhD student, Department of Information Systems 2: Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Technology Abstract The alienation of information systems (IS) research from practice is blamed on the dominance of the positivist paradigm which may not always produce practically relevant knowledge that is practicably adopted. To date most IS research is hinged on a positivist approach mainly because IS has evolved by adopting concepts from other disciplines that use the same paradigm for research. Research in IS however, is a multi-activity process that may require different research approaches. Use of mono-methods poses potential inadequacies in solving IS problems since strengths and weaknesses of various methods for the different stages of research differ. The purpose of using multi-method research is meant to address these potential drawbacks of the individual methods by exploiting the strengths of each method at the various stages of research. Analysis of the epistemological assumptions for each of the methods is therefore essential not only to establish the appropriateness of use of a method in a phase of research but also the compatibility of methods to be used together. The strength of methodological pluralism therefore depends on how well the epistemological characteristics of the research methods are matched. This paper reviews leading works in IS research paradigms and proposes an approach that uses a matrix to guide methodological pluralism analysis which is the major contribution of the paper to literature. The matrix has a six phase logical fow criteria of analysis that can iteratively guide a user to decide whether or not to use methodological pluralism through sequencing or triangulation that is augmented by a similar logical fow chart.