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Does leadership style affect absenteeism in a company? The purpose of this paper is to contrast the effects of two leadership styles – transformational and passive avoidant – on absenteeism, both legitimate and illegitimate, as mediated by job satisfaction.

A self‐report questionnaire was completed by a sample of 120 employees of a national mail delivery company. Hierarchical regressions were used to analyze the data.

It was found that transformational leadership decreases illegitimate absenteeism, while passive avoidant leadership increases it. In regard to legitimate absenteeism, transformational leadership is shown to have no effect, while passive avoidant leadership is shown to be negatively related to it. Together, the findings regarding passive avoidant leaders suggest their subordinates tend to come to work when ill (presenteeism), but stay away from work when well (illegitimate absenteeism).

For managers trying to reduce the costs of absenteeism, this suggests that leadership style can make a difference. Managers who give subordinates very little attention, or attention only when they have done something wrong – the passive avoidant style – are likely to experience the higher costs of both absenteeism and presenteeism. Adopting the transformational style may help to reduce these costs.

The paper helps to extend the current work on leadership; it examines the passive avoidant style, which remains understudied to date; and it enriches our understanding of the relationship between leadership style and absenteeism as an outcome variable by moving beyond a uni‐dimensional conceptualization of absenteeism. Finally, it serves as a basis for future research by providing evidence for a somewhat counter‐intuitive finding that, under passive avoidant leaders, workers appear to come to work when sick, but stay away from work when well.

Research in corporate social responsibility and performance (CSR/CSP) has made very significant advances over the past several decades, yet there is so much more to be done. Research in this area is exceptionally difficult because of corporate opaqueness and secrecy, the lack of a viable guiding theory, and the juxtaposition of CSR/CSP against the prevailing neoclassical economic theory of the firm. Researchers’ choices of topic, domain, theory, variables and their operational surrogates, data, and analytical method have all come a long way but require a great deal more conscious refinement. Pressures on untenured researchers and those not fully promoted are tremendous; thus, senior scholars are in the best position to organize and supervise research projects of serious benefit to CSR/CSP knowledge and understanding.