You can't help but raise a wry smile to hear that bosses are letting the side down when it comes to making socially responsible choices with their travel arrangements.

A global study run by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and KDS gauged the opinions of 317 business travellers and procurement and travel executives via an online poll. And a disgruntled bunch they were, too.

The findings? 45% say top managers set a bad example with their travel choices in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Seeing as the survey also pointed out that 45%  of respondents report to senior management on business travel carbon emissions, it seems there’s a bit of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ going on.

Looking to a blog posted following September’s Brussels roundtable, one message was that, “there are few categories that offer the potential to make a statement to the organisation as much as travel. And that's often why senior leadership will get involved.”

Get involved it may well do, but if this survey is reflective of the general attitude in companies, leadership is some way from leading the CSR travel program.

Still, this is fundamentally a pretty old division between levels of management. What is interesting to note though that 59% of respondents say they would like more guidance on their employers’ CSR and travel policies. Better defined travel policies are required then.  

There’s no getting away from how thorny this issue is and how much time procurement spends dealing with travel spend. Where procurement has had some success at controlling it, from a CSR perspective it comes down to the old problem – how firm can you make travel policies when senior leadership isn’t walking the walk?

Beyond the CSR angle, the survey found that morale suffered as a result of having to take cheaper, more environmentally sound choices while the big wigs swanned around in first class. I wonder why?