Ever since business logistics became a scientific discipline, the use of tangible artefacts
such as transport cost, delivery time and inventory turnover has been influenced by
physical science in making non-living phenomena its study objects (Mentzer and Kahn,
1995). As logistics and transport are predominantly a practice-oriented and solutionbased
discipline, research outcomes are methodologically shaped by operations research,
focusing on, for example: truck-loads, on-time-in-full deliveries, inventory turnover,
and out of stock situations (Aastrup and Halldorsson, 2008).