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- Bergström Casinowsky, Gunilla, 1965
(författare)
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Consequences of overnight work travel for personal social relations: problems, promises and further repercussions.
- 2010
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Ingår i: Mobilities. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1745-011X .- 1745-0101. ; 5:3, s. 369-386
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article uses survey data from Sweden to examine social consequences of the mobile society. Key questions tackled include the implications of ovrnight work travel for the travellers' ability to cultivate locally based and long-distance friendship and the potential of travel to provide a source of new acquaintances. Data analysis indicates that widening social networks and increasing opportunities to achieve co-presence with long-distance friends, as brought by mobility, represent significant consequences of overnight work travel from an individual's standpoint. This experience was salient even among those responents who travelled no more than occasionally, while only the most frequent travellers perceived their travel as something impeding with their chances of sustaining local social ties. While the benefits deriving from travle thus seem incontestable, it may therefor not be possible either to entirely discard the prevalent notion of mobile lifestyles as a factor undermining social cohesion and promoting isolation and loneliness.
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| 2. |
- Bergström Casinowsky, Gunilla, 1965
(författare)
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Tjänsteresor i människors vardag - om rörlighet, närvaro och frånvaro
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Title: Business travel in everyday life: Mobility, presence and absence. Written in Swedish and English. 248 pages. Author: Gunilla Bergström Casinowsky Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE 40530 Göteborg, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-975405-8-2 ISSN: 1650-4313 Göteborg 2010 In this thesis, current debates on mobile lifestyles and the work-life interface are woven together and studied from the perspective of frequent business travellers. The overreaching aim is to investigate the significance of travel at work in people’s everyday lives. More specifically, the main objective is to shed some light upon emotional and practical consequences of travel-related absence from home for friendship and family relations. The thesis consists of four papers based on two different empirical studies: one qualitative study comprised by two sets of observations and 15 interviews, and one quantitative study based on survey data. The analysis of the qualitative data resulted in two papers written in Swedish (papers I and II). The results from the quantitative study are presented in two papers written in English (papers III and IV). Paper I is an exploratory study with the purpose of discovering focal dimensions of the work-life interface from a business traveller’s perspective. The second paper further explores gendered experiences of overnight work travel revealed in the first paper. Whereas the women’s experiences are characterized by feelings of loneliness, guilt and a sense of vulnerability, the men’s experiences are less negative and they also call attention to some positive sides of being cut off from everyday life at home. The gendered experiences have practical implications for how the respondents organize their mobile life. In prioritizing being at home, the female strategy aims at reducing the amount of nights away and, consequently, leads to comparatively many hours on the road. In contrast, the male strategy is more focused on minimizing the hours on the road with the purpose of actively “being there” for the family while at home and taking advantage of the “free” time while away. Questions about implications of overnight work travel in terms of the traveller’s ability to keep in touch with locally based as well as long-distance friends, and the opportunities that the travel might offer as a source of geographically extended social networks, are elaborated through analysis of the survey data (paper III). The benefits of mobility in terms of extended social networks represent the main social consequences of work travel as established in the analyses. Staying away from home due to work travel is also seen as potentially facilitating the coordination with friends living elsewhere. Some downsides are reported as well. The most frequent travellers feel negatively affected by mobility, reporting problems hampering coordination with friends close to home. Following up one thread noticed in the qualitative study, one issue explored by the quantitative data is the significance of work-related travel for the gendered division of domestic responsibility (paper IV). The results reveal a clear pattern in two key respects. When the work traveller is a woman, the allocation of home-based responsibility seems to remain unaffected. By contrast, the effect of the business trips when the travellers are men is a reduction in their relative share of responsibility for the home and the family.
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| 3. |
- Gustafson, Per, 1966-, et al.
(författare)
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Att ta kontroll över resandet : Travel management och tjänsteresor med tåg
- 2010
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over the past few decades, business travel has increased substantially, with both individual and organizational consequences. Many larger companies and public authorities therefore attempt to implement policies, regulations and standardized routines for their travel. The concept of travel management describes such activities pursued on a professional basis, by employed travel managers. The purpose of this report is to investigate travel management in Sweden and, in particular, to examine business travel by train in relation to professional travel management. The report mainly draws on interviews with travel managers, but empirical data also include interviews with sales personnel at travel agencies and at SJ (the state-owned Swedish railway company), interviews with frequent business travellers, and travel policy documents. To begin with, six important tasks for a travel manager are identified: 1) developing and implementing a travel policy, 2) cooperating with a travel agency, 3) making agreements with suppliers, 4) creating standardized payment routines, 5) collecting and analyzing travel statistics, and 6) communicating and gaining support within the organization. These different tasks are then described and analyzed in some detail, and specific attention is given to how the railway as a transport system works in relation to the practice of travel management. Moreover, two separate chapters in the report examine business travel by train from the travellers’ perspective and how environmental considerations in travel management may promote travel by train.
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