In the common narrative on railway regulation, the post-war period in Sweden and other Western European countries is generally described as a period with strong State intervention, reflecting the substantial social obligations state railway companies had to fulfil. It is assumed that it was only from the 1970s that the operational autonomy of the State utilities in areas such as financial management and investments was increased as large integrated bureaucracies within the utilities were split into specialized agencies and units based on ideals from business administration. However, this approach cannot explain the process of market adaptation which occurred within the Swedish State Railways in relation to the market for goods transport during the post-war period. During this process, the Swedish State Railways regained a relevant position in the transport markets as they successfully developed a model for and invested to integrate railway transports into the emerging system of intermodal container transport.
In the paper, we will describe how this process was influenced and enabled by an internal reform within the Swedish State Railways which built on ideals and practices from business administration. Even if the general direction of transport policy was directed towards dealing with social obligations, successive director-generals were able to adapt the organization to deal with the new conditions in the goods transport market. We will describe how the task of the director-general was redefined from civil servant to business leader. It will be further demonstrated how this led to such radical changes within corporate governance, management and accounting that it enabled the goods transport division of the Swedish State railways to act on parity with private actors in the transport market.