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Mixed methods research is useful to enhance theoretical and practical research contributions. However, single methods have predominated much logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) research. This paper presents a review of mixed methods research across ten years in LSCM to determine their usage, identify benefits and inhibitors, and provide suggestions for LSCM researchers to realise the benefits from using mixed methods.

This paper adopts a mixed methods approach through a quantitative analysis of methods used in six leading LSCM journals, an e-mail survey of mixed methods article authors during the review period, and four published case studies that used mixed methods.

Only 144 (ten percent) of all empirical articles were published using mixed methods during the review period. A range of benefits and inhibitors regarding mixed methods adoption were found. Suggestions for LSCM authors include research training in mixed methods use and developing a project-specific research design due to the specificity and complexity associated with mixed methods research.

LSCM is at a critical juncture, shaped by new contexts, themes and challenges, and would benefit from different research approaches and methods. This paper contributes to the LSCM domain through analysing the current state, benefits and inhibitors of mixed methods research in LSCM journals to provide a renewed call to action and guidelines for mixed methods LSCM research, and suggesting research design adaptation to enable agile and resilient research when investigating rapidly changing and complex phenomena.

Despite the increasing discourse on mixed methods (MM) in academic literature, less attention has been focused on its methodological development in the built environment in developing countries. This paper aims to examine the basis and challenges of the application of MM for health-care facilities management (FM) research in Ghana.

This paper adopts autoethnography as its research method, coupled with a scholarly review of methodological literature to position a technical view on the application of mixed methods for health-care FM research in a developing country.

This paper contributes and lends support to the methodological strength of MM as epistemologically coherent and useful for understanding the intricacies of health-care FM. This paper advances the proposition that the nascent stage of FM development in Ghana, paucity of literature, epistemological and axiological considerations underscore the choice of a sequential MM. The attitude of research participants, ethical challenges and time-lapse for data analysis were observed as practical challenges.

Discussion of data integration is excluded.

This paper provides a nuanced understanding of the concept of MM in health-care FM and set forth practical recommendations worthy to enhance the application of MM research.

This paper is among the few focusing on methodological discussion of health-care FM. This paper proposes a framework to guide researchers in the application of mixed methods.

After the initial life (which coincides with the origins of social research in the 1850s, and lasts until 1940s), mixed methods revive at the beginning of 1970s. However, this second life (or renaissance) receives the deleterious imprinting of quantitative methods. In fact, some of the old positivist assumptions are still reproduced and active in most of mixed methods research. This imprinting is traceable in the ambiguity (and purposive semantic stretching) of the term “qualitative”: from the 1990s, it encompasses almost everything (even approaches considered positivistic in the 1950s!). Whereby the semantical extension of the term “qualitative” has become a sort of Trojan horse for a new legitimation of many quantitative and positivist researchers: a great swindle. Today “qualitative” is nonsense and acts as a bug, which muddies the qualitative-quantitative debate. For this reason, it would be better to remove the bug (i.e. to discharge the term “qualitative” from the language of social research and methodology), reset and start over from the level of specific research methods, considering carefully and balancing their diversity before mixing them. The purpose of this paper is to outline two (complementary) ways of integration of methods (“mixed” and “merged”), arguing that “merged” methods realize a higher integration than “mixed” methods, because the former overcome some weaknesses of the latter.

A semantic and pragmatic analysis of the term “qualitative.”

In social and behavioral sciences, the second life of mixed methods has been heavily affected by old positivist and quantitative assumptions.

The term “qualitative” should be discharged from the language of social research and methodology.

The coveted integration in “mixed” methods, could be better pursed through “merged” methods.

Disentangling the strands of a debate (the qualitative-quantitative one) become muddy.

An alternative framework, to interpret the mixed methods history and their recent developments, has been proposed.

This study aims to advance mixed methods as a research methodology in accounting through three research objectives: develop a typology of mixed methods research (MMR) features from current literature, analyse accounting papers published in two leading South African journals against these features, and offer recommendations for best practice going forward.

This paper follows five elements for a MMR review study: identify the methodological aim and choice of discipline; identify the relevant accounting MMR literature and collect the data; develop a codebook and analysis procedures to assess the reviewed papers against; report on the MMR findings; and discuss the findings and make recommendations.

The use of MMR as a methodological approach is increasing; however, in many instances published papers revealed limited methodological detail. Furthermore, most accounting MMR studies use a convergent MMR design, with data collected qualitatively using interviews/focus groups and quantitatively using questionnaires. Finally, accounting education studies is the topic within accounting research that mostly use MMR.

The study is limited to a five-year period and the prevalence of applicable MMR articles during that period in two journals.

This paper presents advantages of using MMR in accounting studies and offer recommendations for best practice to answer the complex accounting research questions of today.

This study is the first systematic examination of how mixed methods is used in accountancy research as reflected in South African journals.

The purpose of this article is to determine the uses of mixed method research designs published in major marketing journals.

This study involved a content analysis of 2,166 articles published between 2003 and 2009 in nine prominent marketing journals.

A total of 34 mixed method studies implemented data‐collection procedures sequentially (79 percent), eight implemented them concurrently (19 percent) and one combined both sequential and concurrent procedures (2 percent). On the whole, priority was skewed more toward quantitative strands, with 27 articles prioritizing quantitative data (63 percent), three articles prioritizing qualitative data (7 percent), and 13 articles prioritizing both equally (30 percent).

It is clear that marketing scholars recognize the benefit of mixing qualitative and quantitative research; however, as a discipline we are not demonstrating knowledge of the mixed method literature or procedures, as only one article recognized or mentioned knowledge of mixed method procedures or cited mixed method research.

This study provides guidance for researchers in identifying design types appropriate for various rationales or research objectives and models of different design types that have been published in marketing journals. In addition, implications for designing mixed methods studies in marketing include highlighting the need for scholars to specifically address issues such as the timing and priority given to each data type (i.e. sequential or concurrent), and the integration (or mixing) of the both data types.

Until now, the role of mixed methods designs in marketing has not been the subject of formal examination. The delineation of the major forms in mixed method designs provides a framework for looking at such design types, which helps to provide more credibility to the field of marketing by providing examples of research designs that are substantially different than single strand studies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the dilemmas involved in the debate on the how, when and why of mixed methods research.

The authors' starting point is formed by developments in the philosophy of science literature, and recent publications on mixed methods research outside of the management accounting domain.

Contrary to recent claims made in the management accounting literature, the authors assert that uncovering points of disagreement between methods may be as far as researchers can go by combining them. Being reflexive can help to provide a deeper understanding of the research process and the researcher's role in this process.

The paper should extend the debate among management accounting researchers about mixed methods research. One of the lessons drawn is that researchers are actively immersed in the research process and cannot purge their own interests and views. Accepting this lesson casts doubt on what the act of research may imply and achieve.

The paper shows that combinations of research methods should not be made based on a “whatever works” attitude, since this approach ultimately is still infused with ontological and epistemological considerations that researchers have, and should try to explicate.

The value of this paper lies in the provision of philosophical underpinnings that have not been widely considered in the management accounting literature on mixed methods to date.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how to implement mixed methods research in supply chain management.

A review of past journal analyses on research methods used in supply chain management‐related disciplines is conducted to demonstrate the low incidence of mixed methods research in supply chain management. Drawing from literature on multiple and mixed methods research, the paper provides guidelines for designing and reporting such studies.

Knowledge development in logistics and supply chain management relies primarily on single‐method quantitative research designs, while mixed methods approaches are rarely used. Thus, there is a significant opportunity to advance the discipline through the rigorous application of mixed methods research.

Supply chain management phenomena are complex and dynamic. Thus, the application of mixed methods research would serve the advancement of the discipline as these approaches provide richer understanding and more robust explanations of such phenomena.

If supply chain research is to keep up with the dynamic business environment, research methods must be applied with the capability to fully explain supply chain phenomena. The application of a single‐method research approach is not always adequate for this task.

This paper is the first to draw on research from various disciplines to investigate the use of mixed methods in logistics and supply chain management research. It examines its prevalence in the discipline, provides examples of its application from the supply chain management literature, prescribes how to implement mixed methods research, and describes the benefits and limitations of such designs.

The purpose of this paper is to set the scene for this special issue by synthesising the vast array of literature to examine what constitutes mixed methods research, and the associated strengths and risks attributed to this approach.

This paper takes the form of a literature review. The authors draw on extensive methods research from a diverse range of social science disciplines to identify and explore key definitions, opportunities and risks in mixed methods studies. They review a number of accounting studies that adopt mixed methods research approaches. This allows the authors to analyse variance in how mixed methods research is conceptualised across these studies and evaluate the perceived strengths and limitations of specific mixed methods design choices.

The authors identify a range of opportunities and challenges in the conduct of mixed methods research and illustrate these by reference to both published studies and the other contributions to this special issue.

With the exception of Modell's work, there is sparse discussion of the application and potential of mixed methods research in the extant accounting literature.

This paper describes the effect of factors on the strength characteristics of cement treated clay from laboratory tests performed on cement mixed clay specimens. It is considered that several factors such as soil type, sample preparing method, quantity of binder, curing time, etc. can have an effect on strength characteristics of cement stabilized clay. A series of unconfined compression tests have been performed on samples prepared with different conditions. The results indicated that soil type, mixing method, curing time, dry weight ratio of cement to clay (Aw), and water‐clay to cement (wc/c) ratio were main factors which can have an influence on unconfined compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, and failure strain of cement stabilized clay. Unconfined compressive strength of soil‐cement samples prepared from dry mixing method was higher than those prepared from wet mixing method.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the adoption of mixed methods in voluntary environmental reporting research.

The costs and benefits of mixed methods are outlined, and the use of mixed methods in prior voluntary environmental reporting research is discussed. A reflection of the author's experience and the practical issues of adopting a QUAN→qual sequential mixed methods research design to examine voluntary environmental reporting practices and processes are presented.

Adopting mixed methods research involves costs to the researcher and the research, including the extra time and energy needed to collect, analyse, interpret, integrate and write up the data, and the need to consider potential biases and trade‐offs affecting design choices. However, these costs are outweighed by the opportunity mixed methods research presents to develop greater research skills and provide a fuller and richer picture of voluntary environmental reporting.

The specific costs and benefits of adopting mixed methods research discussed in this paper are primarily limited to research designs involving content analysis and interviews due to the use of these research methods in the focal study and in most prior mixed methods research examining voluntary environmental reporting.

This paper is one of few to reflect on the adoption of mixed methods research to examine voluntary environmental reporting. It highlights to other researchers the research design considerations that should be made, the costs involved (both to the research and the researcher), and the improved contribution to knowledge achievable when adopting mixed methods research over alternative approaches.