Miljöinvesteringar i svensk transportnäring Drivkrafter och strategier

Sammanfattning: The environmental work in the Swedish transportation business was not very prioritized during the period up until 1990. If any environmental work occurred at all, it often entailed only necessary measures to meet the demands of environmental law.All this changed almost over night roundabout 1990. The environmental issue had become politically important during the 1980s and environmental demands concerning large industrial and combustion plants started to wear off on the transportation business. In addition to this, competition between road and railway transportation sharpened due to political decisions on railway investments. The management of the national Swedish railway company SJ realized that this was a golden opportunity to become offensive in marketing, and that environment could become a success factor for the railway. By establishing an environmental policy and an environmental program, SJ took an initiative that large competitors and business representatives quickly tried to respond to by making investments on their own and by starting debates. Hereby, a rather unique situation occurred in that the transportation companies were driven by customers and society to make environmental investments and also give the business an environmental profile. This situation was the starting point for my study, where the aim has been to study the driving forces and trategies behind the environmental investments made in the Swedish transportation business during the 1990s. I have examined this by interviewing key persons in five companies representing different means of transport, i.e. the railway company SJ, the road transportation company DHL (earlier ASG), the road transportation company Schenker (earlier BTL and even earlier Bilspedition), the air transportation company SAS and the sea transportation company Stena Line. Apart from this, I have also studied the investment process in the chosen companies, and if environmental investments are different from other investments.The method I have used in my study has been semi structured, qualitative interviews. A semi structured interview in this case means that I have used a certain amount of predefined questions. The responses from the interviewed person served as basis for follow up questions and new questions during the interview. A qualitative interview often consists of simple and straight questions being asked and complex and comprehensive answers being returned.The results from the interviews could be summarised as follows: All of the companies in my study claim that it was the pressure of external and internal interests that made the starting point for their environmental work – even if the start appeared on different occasions depending on each company’s situation respectively. Any particularly deep analyses of the economical effects of environmental investments were not made on a regular basis. It rather seemed as if investments and other environmental decisions were based on intuitive feelings. It is also obvious that the pressure from competitors was a strong reason for continuing most of the companies´ environmental work – irrespective of the fact that the company used their environmental investments to create an offensive environmental profile, or to avoid to be criticized for lack of environmental commitment. It is possible to draw a number of conclusions from this study, some of them are general to the group of studied companies, and others are more specific to some of the companies.The first, and perhaps most important, conclusion is that that the driving forces, for instance the pressure from owners, customers, competitors or society as such, were primary, and that the companies’ strategies was developed on this basis. One example is the Swedish railway company SJ, where the company management’s analysis showed both political pressure and obtainable market positions if the company developed and executed an offensive environmental strategy. The other companies in my study showed similar patterns even if their market positions of course varied.The second conclusion is that external profiling also leads to internal pressure within the company. This pressure may be consciously and directed by management via education, seminars etc, or occur on its own due to that the company’s environmental work leads to an interest and commitment amongst employees. The best examples of this are the companies SJ and ASG.A third conclusion is that in many cases, the environmental investments could be compared to a one way road. Some decisions are irrevocable, at least if the company wants to maintain its credibility within the environmental area. For instance, it is equally impossible in practise for SJ to back on the decision to buy environmentally labelled electricity, as for DHL and Schenker to return to diesel fuel with high level of sulphur.The last conclusion is that economical arguments for environmental investments offer a very strong explanation model to which investments were made and which were not. This conclusion seems to be generally valid even if differences in grade exist, depending on if the investments were made with the purpose to be offensive or defensive. No follow up analyses of the economic outcome of the investments have - with a few exceptions – however not been made.Environmental investments consist of physical and image enhancing (i.e. soft) investments. This study shows that physical environmental investments and image enhancing investments have been approached in the same way, but it is harder to quantify the image enhancing investments in economical terms.