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Frequent absences from work can be highly disruptive, while also potentially indicating problematic working conditions that can lead to increased withdrawal behavior. The purpose of this paper is to test the predictive capability of an expanded effort-reward imbalance model on employee absenteeism within the context of policing.

Three separate reward systems are identified by the effort-reward imbalance model. In this study, the authors assessed these individual components for their contribution to officer withdrawal behavior in the form of absenteeism frequency. Data were gathered from officers within a large Australian police agency.

Findings indicate that there was a strong influence of social rewards, such as social support and recognition in the workplace on officer absenteeism rates. Low workload was associated with a higher frequency of absenteeism, suggesting a potential underloading effect. There were a number of significant interactions providing support for the effort-reward imbalance mechanism and the separation of the reward construct. Security rewards were particularly influential and significantly moderated the relationship between effort and absenteeism.

This paper considers an expanded model of worker strain and contributes a longitudinal assessment of the association between perceived effort and reward systems and worker absenteeism.

Since the efficiency‐wage theory has graduated from a hypothesis to a model, there is the need for an established empirical foundation as the basis for continued confidence in the model′s practical validity. To augment the efforts already made in this regard for the industrially developed labour markets, contributes an in‐depth empirical analysis of the model by explicit use of Nigerian data as a prototype of the less developed countries. The results show a very strong case for the empirical validity of the model.

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.

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

This study aims to develop and validate a measure of a specific attitude toward teachers’ absenteeism that predicts this behavior more accurately than other general measures of job attitudes.

Participants were 443 teachers from 21 secondary schools in Israel. In the first phase, the teachers answered anonymous questionnaires related to their general attitudes and their specific attitude through “absenteeism acceptance”. In the second phase, each teacher submitted copies of his half‐year absenteeism records six months after the end of the first phase.

The authors used CFA to cross‐validate the different job attitudes measures. They confirmed the construct validity of “absenteeism acceptance” through convergent and discriminant validity, finding relatively weak negative relationships between “absenteeism acceptance” and the general job attitudes. The criterion validity and predictive validity of the new measure was confirmed by intercorrelations that were found to be relatively stronger between “absenteeism acceptance” and the two measures of absenteeism (frequency, duration) than between the general job attitudes and these two measures. Quasi‐Possion regressions indicated that “absenteeism acceptance” emerges as a better predictor for both of the absenteeism measures than other general job attitudes.

This new measure will benefit schools and principals by allowing them to identify potential absenteeism antecedents and enable early intervention.

Whereas past research on work absence focused primarily on general attitude antecedents, the present study addresses a specific “absenteeism acceptance” measure. This measure can be advantageous in both understanding and predicting voluntary absenteeism more accurately than general attitude measures.

Prior to widespread social insurance, European governments experimented with a variety of programs to protect workers from income loss due to illness. This paper examines the consequences for worker absenteeism of making sickness insurance coverage voluntary or compulsory. Medical benefits appear to have reduced absenteeism for all workers. The effect of paid sick leave depended on insurance fund membership status. Better-paid workers found it easier to take time off in compulsory than in voluntary funds. Distinctive information problems plagued voluntary systems, and eventually were resolved by rejecting the voluntary ideal and forcing all workers into a single risk pool.

Provides new evidence on the relationship between organized and “unorganized” conflict in the British coal‐mining industry. Using time series data the evidence suggests that the relationship between alternative forms of conflict varies over time in response to changes in collective bargaining, in particular the move from pit‐level piece‐work bargaining to national‐level day rate bargaining. Given the decline of strike activity in the UK and many other industrialized economies in recent years it may be time to reasses the relationship between “alternative” forms of industrial conflict; aims to promote renewed interest in this topic.

The aim of this paper is to study age-related differences in how perceptions of two forms of organizational justice, i.e. procedural and interactional justice, are related to short (i.e. non-certified) spells and long (i.e. medically certified) spells of sickness absence.

The authors conducted a study on a large sample of Finnish public sector employees (n=37,324), in which they matched employees' 2004 survey data with their records-based sick absences in 2005 and 2006.

The results suggest that age moderates the association between perceptions of procedural justice and long sickness absences after controlling for gender, tenure, occupational group, work unit, job demands and health behaviors. When older employees experienced a high level of procedural justice, they were 12 percent less likely to miss work due to medically certified illnesses. Overall, older employees were less likely to take short, non-certified sickness absences from work. Finally, the results suggest that high-quality relationships with supervisors can prevent both short and long spells of sickness absence at all ages

The study contributes to the literature on age-related differences in the effects of psychosocial workplace conditions (organizational justice) on employee behavior (absenteeism).

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the last 50 years of empirical research on leaders' influence on employee absenteeism. Furthermore, the aim is to direct future management research by identifying what is still undiscovered regarding areas such as leadership concepts, measurements of absenteeism, methodology and country-specific contexts of the studies.

This is a qualitative review which is suitable as the literature on leadership and employee absenteeism is still emergent and characterized by heterogeneity in terms of operationalization of absenteeism and leadership concepts, respectively, as well as types of analyses.

This review identifies different aspects of leadership affecting employee absence, i.e. leadership behaviours (i.e. task, relational, change, passive), leadership styles, leaders' social modelling and attitudes, and leaders' management of health and absence. Furthermore, a number of gaps in extant research are identified as well as a research agenda is provided.

This review is the first of its kind and hence contributes more profound insights into leaders' influence on employee absenteeism. Leaders as a factor explaining employee absenteeism have only played a minor role, in large theoretical contributions, and the exact behaviour and style is not elaborated much in the literature. Thus, this paper provides practical and theoretical considerations over the role of leaders in shaping employee absenteeism.