development of small-scale intermodal freight transportation in a ...

the dissertation indicate that a systems approach is an appropriate point of departure.
Hence, the question leading the presentation in chapter 2 is: What does systems theory – in
a wide sense – offer to the understanding of the complexity of intermodal transportation
systems?
1.3 RESEARCH PROCESS AND PURPOSES
Due to the industrial funding, an official main purpose of the present research project was
defined already before I entered the scene. The title of the project – Product development
within intermodal transport regarding unit loads, rail wagons and transshipment equipment
– implies a rather narrow technical orientation. The employed technology is, however,
only a small part of the complex transport arrangement denoted intermodal transport and it
was clear to me that it had to be studied in a wider context.
HULTÉN (1997, pp. 15-18) had a similar experience when studying container management.
He found that his research problem required an inductive research process instead of
the conventional deductive process in which the research efforts are described as planned in
detail already from the start. As argued by HELLEVIK (1984, p. 67), the traditionally
higher prestige of a deductive approach often tempts researchers to claim a deductive research
process although the actually applied inductive one is often equally good or even
better. The risk, however, is to attract criticism for being what CHALMERS (1982, pp. 2-5)
denotes a “naïve inductivist” who tries to generalise from single observations. His criticism
stems from his view upon scientific knowledge:
“The laws and theories that make up scientific knowledge all make general assertions
(…), and such statements are called universal statements.”
(CHALMERS, 1982, p. 3)
This leads to the question: Do we really need to generalise in order to gain “scientific
knowledge”? Well, with a systems approach 36 , there is generally no such aim, but still most
systems theorists claim to possess scientific knowledge and systems theory is generally accepted
as a paradigm in its own right.
This research project has a lot in common with HULTÉN’s and has likewise followed a
rather winding road. Yet, the research set out with a clear perspective in collaboration with
Stefan SJÖGREN from the School of Economics and Commercial Law, University of
Göteborg. Jointly we collected very detailed data on a wide variety of intermodal issues.
The data collection was based upon four transport relations between Swedish and continen-
36 This work starts out from a strong systems approach, which is briefly commented upon in the general research
approach section but more comprehensively described in the next chapter.
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