Control and Meaning in the Context of Business Travel.

Control over business trips has been generally regarded as an important resource for frequent business travellers. Building on past research and conservation of resources theory, we investigated in a study among 210 frequent business travellers with two measurement points six months apart, whether meaning of work moderates the relationship between control over business trips and positive work-related outcomes. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that when business travellers experienced low meaning in their job, control over their business trips was negatively related to work satisfaction and trip-related self-efficacy six months later, controlling for the respective outcome at Time 1. However, there were no significant relationships between control over business trips and the outcome variables when frequent travellers experienced their job as highly meaningful. Our findings support the reasoning that control is not per se positive but depends on work meaning and thus the larger context. Implications of these results are that practitioners should take into account that control over business trips is not always beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]