Abstract

Building theory can be thought of as a never-ending journey. Theory building is particularly important to disciplines that are emerging and growing. Compared to older and more established academic disciplines, logistics does not have a rich heritage of theory development. This paper aims to construct a framework that combines different research paradigms with research approaches for logistics theory building. This framework can be used for positioning studies that aim at building and articulating core logistics theories. The framework is illustrated by providing examples from logistics research adhering to different research paradigms (positivism, scientific realism and interpretivism) and using different research approaches (deduction, induction, and abduction). The paper discusses how these different research paradigms and research approaches contribute to theory building in their own way.