Work-related travel behaviors have significantly evolved since the last improvements in ICT.
First, telecommuting has been a significant trend since the past few years. It refers to various types of work: from home, a telecenter, home-based business, geographically dispersed teams, after hour, ... Pratt in "Teleworkers, Trips and Telecommunications: Technology Drives Telework – But Does It Reduce Trips?" agrees that workers travel behavior has changed but is wondering whether telecommuting was a substitution to in-person work or a modification of trips. I personally believe that there can't be any substitution to in-person work. I believe that if a person is telecommuting, he/she should go to the office on a regular basis in order to meet with his team or coworkers and be part of a group dynamic. So I tend to lean towards a modification of trips explanation, telecommuting is more a way to accommodate people's constraints. There is also a study made in 2003 showing that teleworkers tend to overwork (see the link to the article below). That's indeed interesting because teleworking from home for example implies that your home is also your office. There is thus no frontier in terms of space but also in terms of time. People are not deemed to follow the 9 to 5 basis, and will manage their time as they want.
Second, teleconferencing is probably the most cost and time-efficient for a multinational company. Employees can now have a meeting where the participants could be thousands miles apart, share files, presentations, softwares directly. The managers at Headquarters can share pressing issues with their subsidiaries overseas and let them have first-hand information, and therefore be more reactive. All types of tools are available on the market, ranging from video cameras, web-sharing software such as Webex or Adobe Connect, multiple microphones, screens.Teleconferencing can thus help a company save millions of dollars on business travel and also allow employees to prioritize work travels. However, it is sometimes necessary to see your correspondents in-person in order to maintain an interpersonal relationship.
To complement this post, there is a very interesting article about the socio-cultural and behavioral impacts of ICT on work:
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