Traveling and Meeting in a Pandemic World

Sammanfattning: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world by changing and affecting the social practices when millions of employees were forced to stay at home and work in the digital context.The aim with this study is to investigate how business travel patterns have changed over time due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and to investigate what patterns, policies, and behaviors are expected to look like in the future. To investigate this an embedded case study of organizations in Sweden has been conducted. The organizations operate in different sectors which gives a broad view of the case. A qualitative approach was chosen where data was collected from semi-structured interviews as well as from internal documents from the organizations. By using two different data sources together with theory, triangulation was possible. On 13 March 2020, the Swedish government announced restrictions specifying that everyone who could work from home should do so. It is also clearly shown that both domestic and international trips drastically decreased during the pandemic. All the organizations had a decrease in business related travel and only unavoidable trips were made. Habits, patterns, and policies regarding business travel changed during, and after the pandemic, as an effect of institutional processes and an increased awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It is also clear that organizations in Sweden have realized the benefits of working in a digital context, but still want to meet face-to-face when it is considered necessary. Policies, patterns, and habits have clearly changed as an effect of the pandemic and resulted in increased awareness of sustainability and especially CSR. People require more flexible working methods and organizations prioritize working both cost- and time efficient. In the future business traveling will most likely continue to decrease due to increased awareness of sustainability and development of digital tools that fulfill the requirements and needs of organizations. Also, the development of more sustainable travel options will affect and change travel patterns and behaviors. However, future investigations of organizations in Sweden could include more organizations from other sectors and of different sizes which would give an even broader view of the case.