Assessment of TSL Companies in the Polish Market: Methodological Research Dilemmas

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to assess the performance of the Polish TSL (transport, shipping and logistics) sector using diverse research methods. It critically analyses selected, the most frequently applied methods to diagnose entities from the TSL sector. The assessment of transport and logistics companies takes account of conclusions from the review of rankings and cyclical sectoral statistics pointing to gaps or areas that need to be supplemented with other research methods. Attention is drawn to the need to monitor the TSL sector and entities operating within it using tools of strategic and financial analysis. The paper discusses selected methods of assessing TSL companies, such as, the analysis of their competitive and market position and financial analysis. The paper presents rough assessment results for the biggest TSL companies obtained from the proposed tools and inter-dependences amongst them. Methodological problems involved in analysing and presenting the results are also discussed together with barriers in getting access to source data. The author deals with the issue of different data aggregation systems different for internal statistics, Statistics Poland, cyclical reports, and TSL rankings. Finally, having the identified limitations in mind, directions of studies on the TSL market are proposed.