Globalization & the Increase in Work Travel: Effects on Workers and Families

Anisa M. Zvonkovic, NaYeon Lee, Erin Kostina-Ritchey, & Holly Follmer

Paper to be presented at the Groves Conference, 2008, Ireland

Abstract

Though some social forecasters believed that technological advances would result in a virtual global economy in which we interact economically and productively with workers all over the globe, the truth seems to be that technology has enhanced global economic exchanges, resulting in demand for workers in all industrial sectors and in a wide variety of occupations to travel for their increasingly worldwide employers. Our body of work includes secondary analyses of large U.S. data sets which allow us to portray a picture of who today’s work travelers are – and they are not the bureaucratic elite they once were. Through secondary analysis, we know that both men and women have jobs requiring work travel, but the profile of the worker and their family life varies according to gender. Through our ongoing research project, we sketch out examples of work travel as a job demand, demonstrating how the length of work trips, the frequency of trips, and a variety of individual and family conditions and circumstances may be differentially associated with worker and family well-being. Please note that the conference presentation itself will include Celtic music that illustrates many of the points we make concerning globalization and work travel.

Key words: globalization; work travel; gender and work; second shift.

Globalization & the Increase in Work Travel: Effects on Workers and Families

Globalization can be defined and described in multiple ways, positively and negatively. Dictionary definitions discuss applying a given phenomenon to the entire world or broadening the scope of a phenomenon to the whole world. Social commentators have tracked the use of the term globalization.

[Globalization] is a process that has been going on almost throughout recorded history... globalization is like breathing. It is not a process one can or should try to stop; of course, if there are obvious ways of breathing easier and better, one should certainly do so.

(Anne O. Kreuger, Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, 2002, cited in Chanda, 2007)

Kreuger, as a director of a global financial concern, views globalization as a somewhat benign and inevitable force. A different perspective can be gleaned:

Globalisation, a word invented to convey the false hope of an integrated, inclusive world, has in reality meant the opposite: the rejection and exclusion of hundreds of millions who contribute little or nothing to production and consumption and are thereby considered useless by 21^st century capitalism.

(George, 2004)

[I’m leaving Tipperary, http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=2362]

For better or worse, whether recent or not (given the formation and maintenance of empires, see Chanda, 2007; Prashad, 2007), countries’ economies and workers are tied together. The influence of global companies on workers worldwide has increased, involving a breadth of industries and occupational categories of workers. In the United States, for example, the likelihood is high that a worker in a company will be interacting with the global marketplace, whether because the company has global holdings, the manufacturing of the company’s products occurs at different international sites, through the exporting of goods, or in other ways.

Daily life presents challenges to those involved in contemporary global work. Working in multiple countries involves political and regulatory issues (e.g., taxes). Even though world economies seem to be open and free, in fact there are many different hurdles and processes that must be overcome. As well, national, regional, and local customs and practices often pose problems. Besides an understanding and awareness of customs and practices, language can be a barrier to working with people in other countries.

Recent organizational management and scholarly attention has been paid to working with individuals in multiple time zones and at geographically disparate places. One multi-national company for example has found a "magic time" that cross-continental time conference calls can be placed that is minimally disruptive to all workers. Technology enables workers at far-flung locations to have access to each other, via email, fax, phone (even cell phone in remote locations), and video conferencing (for example, see see http://www.virtualworkswell.com). Even with the increase in technology, however, people still have to meet face-to-face, and supervisors must visit work sites to understand work flow, much less to optimize work relationships. Perhaps because technology facilitates direct communication between managers at different sites (as opposed to communication mediated by chief operating officers), literature has shown that there is increased contact across all company levels and with clients across the globe. The need for personal contact has not diminished in the global economy, in fact, given the increase in global economy, it has increased.

As business becomes more global and technology calls for 24/7 performance, those who lead companies must be able to move through several time zones several times a week, and communicate with staff and customers round the clock.

(Hymowitz, 2001)

Interestingly, the literature on the effects of globalization has largely been confined to the macro-effects on national and regional economies, or the effects on individual workers. Whole levels of analysis have hence been ignored, including the effects on community, social networks, extended family and kin, and immediate family. We can turn to music again to understand some of these effects [Paddy’s green shamrock shore, http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=5262]

As stated before, the globalization of companies and economies has spurred the need for workers to travel. Previously, frequent work travelers were part of an elite class of workers. Today there are new occupational sectors that require travel, and globalization has expanded the markets for products, which necessitates international travel. Data gathered during the 1980s found a large increase in the prevalence of work related travel, to between 25-30% of full time workers (Presser & Hermsen, 1996; Roehling & Bultman, 2002). Data from another national probability study gathered in the following decade found that 39% of full time workers reported at least one night of work travel in the last 12 months, with 15% of those reporting traveling away from home for work twenty or more nights in the last year (Zvonkovic & Peters, under review). About 66% of the individuals who reported work travel were men, a percentage mirrored in other statistics reflecting that men are the majority of work-related travelers (Presser & Hermsen, 1996; Roehling & Bultman, 2002).

Travel has increased across all industry and occupational codes. At present, travel occurs most frequently in the following industries: engineering and architectural; business management; justice; nursing; trucking, and national security (MIDUS). Occupations involving frequent travel include managerial/professional jobs, sales/technical, and precision production/craft repair occupations than in other job categories (NSCW, 1997). The MIDUS data set revealed similar occupations among frequent travelers, such as managers, marketers, public relations representatives, administrators, and supervisors.

Work travel schedules have heretofore not been well investigated. National data sets have asked respondents how many nights they have spent away from home due to work (typically in the previous 3 month period). This format was used in the MIDUS and the NSCW. Laila Rach (2002) studied work travelers in a grant funded by Wyndham Hotels. She concluded that there was a group of extreme travelers who traveled more than 100 nights a year; frequent travelers who traveled more than 20 nights a year; and occasional travelers whose travel is less than 20 nights a year. Belonging to each of these groups, we can imagine, carries with it different implications for workers’ daily lives. Having the ability to examine the travel intensity as well as the total number of nights should lead to a refined understanding of work travel.

In our research, we attempt to capture the complexity of work travel schedules by the development of a travel intensity scale, which includes: (a) the number of trips a worker takes; (b) the length of the trips; and (c) the total number of nights away. How trips are configured provides more detailed information about how travel is experienced by the worker. For example, there are travel schedules of women in 3 different occupations:

It’s easy to imagine different impacts on workers and their families and their personal lives in general with these different patterns. Of course, there are other factors that might make a difference in how people experience travel, such as whether they travel alone or with coworkers (but also how they feel about this); the extent to which they take time for leisure; their ability to take family members along with them; whether they work in evenings during trips or not; the pace of work in general and during trips; the reason for travel (for example self-volunteered travel verses travel needed to be able to receive a promotion at work or in order to remain in a position); and other factors.

Our current research project obtains detailed data from family members of frequent work travelers. About 1/3 of the way through our data collection, in the subsequent sections we have drawn case study examples below from women whose jobs require frequent travel to illustrate the different dimensions that seem to play a role on how they conceive of their work travel and how it may affect their families. At the conference, we will supplement this information with comparable case studies of men holding similar jobs to these women. Our project includes parents and adults in partner relationships who are not parents, but these case studies are drawn from the parents in our sample. Appendix 1 portrays descriptions of the women we use for case study information. It is worth noting that while each of the primary travelers in the case studies shown in Appendix 1 are women, each comes from a very different life and family situation.

Pam is a mother of 18 month old twins whose husband, Peter, is able to work out of their home and help care for the children. While she loved both her job and travel, she felt at a loss towards the "traditional" mother role, seeing herself, and not her husband, as the "traditional provider" for the family. Concern and confusion over being the breadwinner and taking on indirect care of the children (such as matching their outfits, making doctor’s appointments, etc.) weighed heavily on her mind. For her, tasks such as these occupied her time pre- and post-trip. She noted that while she loved her job and the actual travel, she had emotional difficulty when she noticed that her children seemed not to notice she had been gone after she returned from a several day trip, but were almost panicked if their father left the house to run errands. Noting that it could be in part due to the age of the children, she also voiced concerns about how her relationship with the children would develop as they became older if she continued to travel.

Cindy reflected her satisfaction with her job and a highly positive view of her work travel. Her son, Chad, was a senior in high school, and she considered his preparations to leave for college. She noted that she was beginning to feel that her time with her family, particularly Chad who would soon leave for college, was rushed. Given her son’s age and level of independence, she did not express concerns over issues like meal preparation, transportation to events, laundry, etc. She did, however, express her concern in having a support net system established to make sure he remained active in activities, especially sports and church, in part to help make sure he did not have "too much free time". When possible she would schedule her trips to be home over weekends, in order to participate in church activities with her son.

Ann is an illustration of a growing family form in which both of the parents traveled overnight for work. Not necessarily reflective of other couples in which both partners traveled, Ann did not enjoy her travel, felt negatively about her husband’s travel. She was relatively satisfied with her job and felt that her job performance was strong and well recognized. Because Al’s job was connected with public schools and extracurricular activities in which the children were involved, their children often traveled with him, so much the norm that the children themselves did not identify that their father’s job actually required his own overnight travel. Ann perceived travel to be a problem affecting her personally: when her husband Al traveled with their children for school activities, she hated to go, feeling bad if she did not attend, but dreading the events due to the extra travel demands placed on her. It seems that Ann was relatively less connected to the children than was Al, which we believe was connected in some way with the relatively negative impression on her adjustment and happiness with the family situation.

Just as Ann yielded a somewhat mixed picture in terms of feelings about the job versus travel and feelings toward family, the last case study, Kay, showed a complicated picture. Kay regarded travel overall as a negative experience, she would often schedule trips at times that allowed her husband, Ken, the freedom to travel with her. Having Ken accompany her was possible because she had some control over scheduling her trips and her husband enjoyed flexibility in his position. These are advantages associated with some professional positions, very different from the work travel experiences of those in other occupational categories and social classes.

Clearly, a variety of factors affect people’s adjustment to work travel. The examples of Celtic music were focused more on emigration and missing home place and loved ones, without much opportunity for connection. In current work, we see that travel schedule makes a difference in how people deal with work travel. For these reasons, our project seeks workers with similar occupations and different travel schedules. We have seen that social class and economic advantage affects peoples’ options for ways of adjusting to their travel. Though the examples traced in this paper focused on women who have children, gender and presence of children are important to understand. We have focused on individuals with the greatest stress associated with traveling.

References

Zvonkovic, A.M., & Peters, C.L. (under review). Profiling frequent work travelers by job characteristics and personal qualities.