Pragmatism: A Methodological Approach to Researching Strategic Alliances in Tourism

This paper brings together three streams of social science literature (paradigms, tourism research and strategic alliance practice) in order to further the debate on the need to adopt an appropriate paradigm in tourism research. By reviewing past research methods used in tourism the paper singles out pragmatism as a methodology that could yield better research insights because of its potential to allow the mixing of methods. A model based on pragmatism that could be used by researchers in tourism has also been developed, one which gives room for application of any theory or discipline. This model has been developed taking into consideration the fact that tourism has eclectic origins.