James Faulconbridge

Lancaster University

Business travel as institutionalised practice: reconceptualising the production of

mobility dilemmas

Context – the taken for granted-ness of business travel

The failed ICT-revolution Barclaycard Business Travel Survey:

1996-2006 – 32% increase in business travel Average executive surveyed travels 600 miles a month Over 50% say recession has not reduced travel – too

important

Mobile lives (Elliott and Urry, 2010)

The co-operative ecology of virtual and

embodied mobility (Haynes, 2010; Faulconbridge et al., 2009)

Yet reasons for reducing business travel well recognised: The cost to business - travel related and lost time (Bray, 2008;

Salt and Wood, 2012)

Risk and business continuity – the volcanic ash crisis (Budd et al., 2011)

Social costs – work/life balance, stress, familial responsibilities (Espino et al., 2002; Middleton, 2008)

Carbon: 3.5bn business trips by air globally for business each year (World Bank, 2012)

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UKResidentsoverseas visitsby airforbusiness

Visits tothe UKby airforbusiness

InwardFDI toUK

• Yes, functional need could explain the relationship...

• But other ‘forces’ also at work… exemplified by disconnect between views on effects of recession and stats

• Mobility cultures embedded in work practices matter and are actively sustained, impeding transitions to less mobile lives

• Travel not so much a decision, more a taken-for-granted way of being, practiced to conform to expectations and norms

• Business travel as a practice

Business travel as a practice

Practices as common normalised ways of being/doing “temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and

sayings. Examples are cooking practices, voting practices, industrial practices, recreational practices, and correctional practices” (Schatzki, 1996: 89)

The fundamental ‘stuff’ of life Key is that many practitioners recognise way of doing as

legitimate and normal (Shove, 2003) - Showering & laundering: common values, technologies and hence

ways of doing

Result is practitioners that perform a practice unconsciously: its just a normal part of everyday life

The inter-locking components of a normal practice:

• Meaning: practices are associated with and driven by particular mental maps, emotions, and understandings of legitimate ways of being (Reckwitz, 2002).

• Competency: participating in a practice requires, first, knowledge of how to complete the required actions associated with a way of doing a task (Reckwitz, 2002) and, second, knowledge of how to legitimately engage in the practice (Shove and Pantzar, 2007).

• Materials: the availability of particular objects, knowledge about how to use them (Shove and Pantzar, 2005), and the way objects become intimately tied to meanings (e.g., the car to convenience and comfort – see Warde, 2005) means materials are closely related to the emergence and decay of practices.

So how did business travel become a practice? The case of aeromobility

Aeromobility: a two stage history

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Visits to the UK by air for business

1. Foundations: 1960-1980 2. Consolidating a market: 1980-2000 Post 2000s normality

Foundations: 1960-1980

The airline industry: the making of a technical system

The jet engine (from 300 to 500 mph; enhanced long-haul comfort and capability)

But... Technology alone is not enough

Producing cultures of executive aeromobility was crucial

The shift from road and rail to air: placing a value on time (United Airlines in 1960s says anyone paid more than $1/hr should fly as cost efficient)

Making business travel distinctive:

“I you want a man to do a first-class job, give him a first-class ticket. Economy class travel looks like sound company policy. On paper. In practice, just how sound is it? Think of what you’re asking your man to do. Make decisions that could affect the future of your company. Decisions that rely on clear thinking. He’ll need to be rested and relaxed as possible. Ready to do into action as soon as he reaches his destination. And that’s how first class will get him there. More relaxed because he’s travelling in greater space and comfort. More rested because there are few people and fewer disturbances. And, psychologically, that first class ticket does a lot for his image and yours. It tells him you think he’s the best man for the job. So give him a first class ticket. And he’ll do a first class job”.

1970s British Overseas Airways Corporation Advert

Globalisation and neoliberalism New economic discourses and practices

Lassez-faire state roll-back: Tokyo round of GATT in 1979 removed US$300

billion of tariffs

Thatcher and Reagan roll-back the state and privatise

A new discourse (with governmental effects): free markets and the encouragement of trade

The result: New International Divisions of labour, a race to

globalise, and a new role for the mobile executive to manage spatially stretched activities

2. Consolidating a market

New systems of provision facilitating and responding to new economic practices

The internet: facilitating global trade and thus encouraging not reducing mobility (mobility allies – Haynes, 2010)

Mobiles (smart phones especially) and the laptop: allowing work on the move and maximising productivity

The supporting system of provision

Industry Role

International airport and business hotel chains (in the 1990s

especially)

Provision of meeting and work spaces for mobile executive

Corporate travel management companies and in-house travel

management departments (as part of Human Resources)

Translating an executive’s list of destinations into a series of

flight codes that minimise travel time and maximise work time,

a series of hotel bookings that ensure spaces for work and

consistent standards of service, and visas that ensure problem-

free international border crossing

Executive intelligence services Magazines and websites (e.g., Business Traveller) as well as

guides (e.g., The survivors guide to business travel (Collis,

2000). All designed to provide the executive with the skills

needed to effectively manage their mobility and minimise

personal (stress, work-life balance) and corporate costs

(expense, travel time)

The effects of the making of a practice

The institutionalisation of executive aeromobility as a way of business life is a result of not a single trend, event or act but is a result of the hanging together of a series of cultural, economic and technological developments

Element of

practice

Factors generating executive aeromobility as practice Contribution to the compulsion of aeromobility

Meaning

Airlines: their role in defining the economic rationality of

aeromobility and the status of aeromobility vis-à-vis the

identity of the executive

Neoliberalism: the need to seek-out new markets which

are at a distance to headquarters

Mobility markers: corporate discourses about the

aeromobile executive as successful, ripe for promotion

and a profit generator

Air is the right way for executives to travel

Aeromobility becomes essential to fulfil new cultures of

corporate spatial expansion

Demonstrating aeromobility (e.g., days on the road; elite

status on frequent flyer programmes) is essential for career

success; e.g. – 69% of workers believe not travelling

enough will jeopardise career chances (Espino et al., 2002)

Clients come to expect executives providing goods and

services to be mobile and visit them in-situ

Competency

Knowledge about how to become and minimise the costs

of aeromobility gained from:

Colleagues in the workplace who share knowledge

Publications that provide intelligence about dos and

don’ts

Employer training about being mobile and in-house

travel support departments

Certain acceptable ways of being mobile develop, with

common ways of acting and using systems of provision

becoming associated with legitimate (cost effective,

culturally normalised) aeromobility practice.

The ‘right’ airline loyalty card as symbolic of career success

Materials

Airlines: providing executive aeromobility infrastructures

(from the business class cabin to the executive lounge

and geographically expansive network coverage)

Communication technologies: allies allowing the

coordination of the spatially dispersed business that

aeromobility is associated with

Aeromobility made possible, economically viable with

materials designed to produce/meet particular logics of

executive travel

Spatially distributed business and hyper-mobile executives

made efficient and negative impacts (e.g., lack of

coordination of subsidiaries; working time lost on the move)

overcome

The image of the business traveller

Status symbols

Glamorising life on the move

Conclusions

The ‘hanging togethers’ that generate business travel as a practice mean business travel grows not just because of what it allows people to do – the functional compulsions perspective – but because it is ingrained in business life

Hence why the ICT revolution never happened: its contradicts a normalised way of doing business

So what?

If we are serious about reducing the impact of business travel, on the environment and social lives, then:

Driving greater use of technology requires more than just ICT provision

The meaning and logic of travel has to be changed – something that requires social reform (travel as illegitimate; immobility as a sign of effectiveness and success) The dilemma of balancing economic demand for better travel infrastructures

against what constrained mobility may do to drive transitions

Virtual systems need to be constructed like mobile systems were constructed - new meanings, competencies as well as material systems of provision so that not travelling is the normal and legitimate thing Investments in practice formation like those made to move executives onto

planes needed to move them into virtual meeting rooms