Research conducted pre-COVID-19 on companies located in the Zurich airport region of Switzerland, regarding the need for global business travel and its impacts. The collection consists of survey data in pdf and CSV, Chapter 4 - Research and findings from the dissertation and Chapter 5 - Case study from the dissertation.This article presents findings from research conducted pre-COVID-19 on companies located in the Zurich airport region of Switzerland, regarding the need for global business travel and its impacts. Five hypotheses were tested using inferential statistics on survey data, three of which yielded significant relationships. Supporting Ha(1), a significant positive relationship was found between “travel frequency” and “business growth”, F(1, 100) = 11.31, p = 0.0011. Supporting Ha(4), corporate culture had a significant positive relationship with business travel frequency (F(1, 100) = 15.50, p = 0.0002) and average trip length (F(1, 100) = 6.39, p = 0.01). And thirdly Supporting Ha(5), corporate social responsibility had a significant relationship with global business travel (91 percent). Ho(2) and Ho(3) were accepted. Deeper context was explored through an interview-based case-study. The research found that smart corporate travel policies and regulations should be instantiated to enhance our environment, which would also benefit employee wellbeing. Travel can be reduced significantly despite being demonstrated that physical co-presence is important for building trust. The case study suggests tools to support the monitoring and management of global business travel by organizations. COVID-19 has impacted travel for business significantly, and future research will be necessary to assess its impact. The article explores the ongoing research in this area, and several relevant implications are proposed for future leaders.

The survey targeted 400 respondents of which 104 completed questionnaires were received. This was a response rate of 26%. Low response rates, even under 10%, are not uncommon with web surveys, but future researchers may want to take account of the advice in van Mol (2015) and provide reminders for their potential participants. This would facilitate a larger sample size, as would increasing the number of invitations sent out. The basic demographic information of the respondents was included in the study as area of working, level of employment. Gender and age questions were not included in the study however, the age range of the respondents is between 25 and 60 years old and the gender is 30-40 percent female and 60-70 percent male. In the case study, the gender is four out of 15 females, meaning 26 percent female and 74 percent male. The survey has four blocks. The first one is related to travelling for business and its purpose or goal achievement and business growth, as well as the characteristics in terms of length of time and frequency. There are also two questions related to the usage of ICT or “remote meeting”. The second block has a series of questions related to the environment, sustainability and micro-mobility; which concerns the relationships between environmental awareness and the consequences of global business travel. This is viewed as individual and as a corporation. The third is related to the corporate culture and corporate social responsibilities; this concerns the relationship between corporate culture and further thoughts on policies related to global business travel and environmental sustainability. The fourth block includes a range of open question which gives deeper knowledge on micro-mobility, contractual travel expectation, incorporation of the environmental dimension on the corporation, corporate and individual advantages and disadvantages of global business travel, and any other thoughts that may be related to global business travel.