The implications of a change in business travel policy on the wider organisation and public policy

Business travel, although only accounting in the UK in 2008 for 3% of trips and 9% of the UK's domestic distance travelled (Department for Transport, 2009, pp28), form a higher proportion in major cities (15% of mileage in London), where transport networks are most congested. Additionally, business journeys can be time consuming and tiring for the business traveller, affecting work/life balance and productivity, and also costly for businesses and the economy. The carbon emissions from business travel are an important factor due to longer distances travelled and the high proportion of journeys undertaken by air. In some cases business travel can be as much as two thirds of an organisations total carbon emissions. This paper reports the findings of a study designed to understand the motivations and attitudes of key actors in private sector organisations towards business travel. These motivations include: • The increasing importance of business travel on business costs and productivity due to the recession • Reductions in carbon emissions and the links to corporate responsibility • The demands of customers to reduce carbon emissions through the procurement process • The extent to which advancements in virtual communication technologies reduce the need to travel • A greater awareness of the vulnerability of travellers and to business continuity highlighted by the volcanic ash cloud. The insights into these causal factors and an understanding of the business practices that support, and barriers that hinder a reduction in business travel, are important in forecasting and developing public policy to produce a more holistic approach to managing personal travel, for both business travel and the commute. This paper will report some of these insights and discuss how a change in business travel policy can have extensive repercussions within an organisation, resulting in major impacts on business travel behaviour

‘Click and collect’; how will this affect e-tailing?

This development paper will explore the findings of a set of semi-structured interviews with grocery retailers and an industry body that support these retailers. The interviews were aimed at exploring the disruptions in the form of changing business models that were occurring primarily within the grocery sector, how the grocery sector was responding to these changes and what they saw as the future developments. The paper will focus on one of these business models, the development of ‘click and collect’ and whether this has the potential to overcome some of the perceived barriers to an increase in e-tailing

Applying business studies methods to transport research

As transport planning and policy diversify from infrastructure development to demand management and Smarter Choices, there is also a need to diversify the research methods for transport studies. With the development of behaviour change as a fundamental part of the Smarter Choices programme, the use of psychology and behaviour change models has been accepted. It should therefore follow that where transport planning involves businesses, such as workplace travel planning, an approach that involves business studies is also needed. A project using aspects of Roger's Diffusion of Innovations, including the attributes of an innovation and the process of an innovation in an organisation will be used as an example to illustrate this. It shows how a business studies theoretical framework can be used as a structure to analyse qualitative data from case studies. The aim of the project was to understand how workplace travel plans had developed and embedded into an organisation's processes and culture. To understand this requires an appreciation of the culture and structure of an organisation and how the travel plan fits within them. To help explain this relationship another aspect of business studies, Mintzberg's Structure in Fives was used. The Mintzberg model describes different types of organisations, such as a professional or machine bureaucracy or a divisionalised form. These forms are then divided into five different parts, which group together the different functions of an organisation and show their interrelationship. This framework was used to help understand the impact of the position of the travel planner on the embedding of a travel plan. This paper will discuss how appropriate the use of business studies methods was for the analysis of the qualitative data for this project. It will then move on to discuss the relevance of business studies techniques as a method in transport studies in general

Towards Smart Business Travel

Business travel is an area that Government policy has left largely untouched, but in London with the percentage of business trips for an average weekday at 8% in 2007/08 (Transport for London, 2009, table 9.3, pp 137) and the average distance travelled accounting for 15% of all the distances travelled (Transport for London, 2009, table 9.7, pp 148), they account for an important proportion of daily journeys. However, this research has shown more notably, particularly for businesses that do a significant amount of business travel, there is an opportunity for TfL to engage with businesses in a new and effective way at a number of levels. These include: • The strategic level, to outline TfLs strategy for the network and to gain feedback on these plans • The detail level including journey planning information with carbon emissions and cost, and corporate ticketing opportunities. • Managing the commute on a voluntary basis as part of wider Corporate Responsibility programmes. What became clear in this research was that many businesses wanted to engage with TfL, but found it hard to find a point of contact. They also wanted to engage in different ways from the current engagement programme of workplace travel plans and the planning process. The structure of the report is to review the existing literature covering both academic and practitioner work, but focussing on the London data where available. The paper will then go on to report the individual perspective from the findings of a survey of business travellers in London. This survey outlines the purpose of business journeys into London, the alternatives to a physical journey and their barriers to use. The final part of the report will explore the business perspective of business travel using data drawn from a series of face-to-face interviews with businesses and stakeholders. This section will look first at the support and engagement issues raised by the companies participating and then to go on to develop a picture of the business travel area within organisations. The report then covers the drivers and barriers to developing a sustainable business travel policy and the practices and methods of communication to support the policy, including the use of virtual meeting technologies. It then concludes by looking at how business travels links into the commute and the attitude of business to electric vehicles. Finally, the report draws together recommendations for TfL about alternative ways to engage with businesses. Details of the methodology used to generate this report are given in the appendix. In brief, it involved: • Completion of 150 on-line surveys by business travellers, identified through the National Business Travel Network (NBTN), TfLs clients, Open University staff across the regions and Open University students across a range of courses. • Meetings with five stakeholder organisations to identify potential case studies, and • Meetings with eight case study businesses, who were identified by stakeholders as being involved in managing business travel in a more sustainable way

Using innovation and business models to analyse the organisational embedding of travel plans

Workplace travel planning began in the UK in the early 1990s. With over ten years of experience in travel plans in the UK, this thesis demonstrates how they have developed, matured and the extent to which they have become embedded into the organisations working practices as a business management tool. This work is distinct from previous research, as it concentrates on the business perspective of travel plans, through a series of in depth interviews within organisations. These interviews were analysed using innovation and business models, such as elements of Rogers� (2003) Diffusion of Innovations and Mintzberg's (1983) Structure in Fives, Designing Effective Organisations, to explore the impact of the characteristics and structure of an organisation on the embedding of a travel plan. This thesis identified factors that have helped to organisationally embed travel plans. A key finding was to show that the motivations for a travel plan change as it matures, from those of external regulation through the planning process, to internal goals such as corporate responsibility and the environment, business growth and human resources issues. This research has shown the importance of linking travel plans to these organisational goals in the embedding process. However, successful embedding is not easy. A travel plan can either remain siloed within an estates function or become so widely dispersed that the benefits are poorly visible. In either case the travel plan runs the risk of being marginalised or lost. The research has also shown that this process of embedding is reliant on the adaptation of the travel plan to match the culture and working practices within an organisation, and that this process of adaptation can be dependent on the position of the travel planner within a strategic area of the organisation. It is concluded that travel planning policy is too focussed on the early stages of adoption and not enough on growing and maturing travel plans, with the result that they are too narrow, and unlikely to yield the business benefits that will secure their long term future

Exploring boundaries in the hybrid environment

Event synopsis: The theme for the WORK2015 Conference, New Meanings of Work sought its justification not only from the changes in work itself but from the global shifts both in the divisions and in the contents of the work. The ongoing turbulences of the post-recession economies at the global, regional and national levels shake also the work and its meanings. The on-going economic and societal changes are connected to forms and boundaries of work and to modes of working and ways of living that are yet to thoroughly mapped and explored. The recent transformations touch the very definition of what is work and call for rigorous explorations and new analyses

Transitions across work-life boundaries in a connected world: the case of social entrepreneurs

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), including mobile technologies, have significant implications for the management of work-life balance (WLB) (e.g. Perrons, 2003) and thus for sustainable work practices within organizations and society at large. Boundary theory (Clark, 2000) argues that individuals maintain boundaries between role identities (e.g. parent, worker) within different social domains (e.g. family, work), and that they regularly have to transition between these domains. WLB may reflect the effectiveness of this transitioning. ICTs have significant implications for the management of these boundaries, particularly as they open up new areas for interaction through mobility and through the potential provision of a variety of easily available connections. In this paper, we report on the findings of 15 social entrepreneurs’ video and interview data. In particular, we explore and advance understanding of the individual experience of switching between roles and domains in relation to ICT use and connectivity

Digi-housekeeping: a new form of digital labour?

Event synopsis: The theme for the WORK2015 Conference, New Meanings of Work sought its justification not only from the changes in work itself but from the global shifts both in the divisions and in the contents of the work. The ongoing turbulences of the post-recession economies at the global, regional and national levels shake also the work and its meanings. The on-going economic and societal changes are connected to forms and boundaries of work and to modes of working and ways of living that are yet to thoroughly mapped and explored. The recent transformations touch the very definition of what is work and call for rigorous explorations and new analyses