Business travel and mobile workers

International audienceTransportation activity generated by businesses has been analyzed mainly with reference to freight flows and commuting trips. The area of employee business trips has been largely ignored, even though the literature - particularly that dealing with industrial economics - has endeavored to show both the central role played by face-to-face encounters in economic contact, and the decreased need for proximity as a prerequisite to such contact taking place in the first place. This paper takes this literature, both theoretical and empirical, as its base, and then aims to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the need for business travel and the profiles of mobile workers. It also investigates how the workers involved perceive, and how companies account for such mobility. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved