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Article Excerpt
Absence behaviours continue to attract the attention of researchers (e.g. Steel, 2003) in part due to their potentially adverse consequences for organizations and individual employees. A recent meta-analysis (Viswesvaran, 2002) found that absenteeism correlated--.21 with organizational records of productivity and -.54 with supervisory ratings of performance, indicating that frequently absent employees tend to be poor performers. A strong association has repeatedly been shown between absences, including sickness absences, as recorded by the employer, and various measures of ill-health (cf. Ferrie et al., 2005). In addition to the associations of absence behaviour with low job performance and workers' ill-health, it is also likely to have a negative impact on the colleagues of absent employees who are expected to substitute for them (Martocchio, 1994) and, as a result, are likely to experience overload and other job-related stresses that may have a negative impact on their health. From a broader perspective, absenteeism is viewed as a component of the withdrawal syndrome, which also includes lateness, intent to leave and voluntary turnover (Hulin, 1991; Johns, 2003).
For several reasons, the negative consequences of absenteeism are exacerbated in the educational sector, where the present study was carried out. First, because an absent teacher teaches different classes during a typical work-day, replacing absent teachers with substitutes tends to be difficult relative to other types of absentee employees. Second, the cancellation of absent teachers' classes tends to disturb their colleagues' work. Third, when an absent teacher's classes are taught by a substitute, usually two teachers are paid for the same teaching job, and this increases substantially the financial cost involved. Finally, teachers' absenteeism has been linked to a decrease in their students' achievements (Woods & Montagno, 1997), and to student absenteeism (Ehrenberg, Ehrenberg, Rees, & Ehrenberg, 1989).
Conceptual background
As noted in a recent review of absenteeism research (Harrison, Johns, & Martocchio, 2000), changes in technology, job design, teamwork and organizational diversity at the beginning of the new century have necessitated modifying current explanatory models of employee absence behaviour. In absenteeism research, a widely used explanatory model is that of Steers and Rhodes (Rhodes & Steers, 1990). This model relates primarily to social-psychological constructs such as employee attitudes, values and goals. We argue that explanatory models of absence behaviour need to reconsider the role of specific objective job characteristics in the context of the changing fabric of relationships surrounding absenteeism. From a broader theoretical perspective, Kanter (1993) maintains that characteristics of situations can either constrain or encourage optimal job performance regardless of employees' personal attitudes and tendencies. According to Kanter, jobs that are highly visible, and permit discretion and flexibility in how work is accomplished, represent organizational positions that are high in formal power. In the context of absenteeism research, Price (1995) posited that the direct effects of objective job characteristics such as job level on absence behaviour are theoretically important for several reasons. One reason is that once such an effect is found, it may lead to further explorations of the social-psychological mechanism most likely to mediate between the objective antecedent variable and absence behaviour. In addition, often the explanatory power of the objective job characteristic relative to other such antecedent variables reflects the potential of future research on the mediating variables to advance our understanding of absenteeism. From the viewpoint of the potential influence on decision makers, objective individual or job characteristics, such as job level and promotions to supervisory positions considered in this study, represent reliable and valid measures that are easily understood by them (Harrison & Martocchio, 1998). Finally, while educational organization cannot simply promote teachers to enhance work attendance, the types of promotions considered in our study, which include promotions to quasi-supervisory positions, probably represent other possible employee movement patterns (Boudreau & Berger, 1985) that could be pursued in an attendance policy.
Past absenteeism research has focused largely on rank-and-file employees, ignoring the absence behaviour of managerial or supervisory personnel (Steers & Rhodes, 1984, p. 264). There are several reasons for this selective focus of past research. First, the study of absenteeism evolved from the belief that absenteeism was a major organizational problem and therefore research into its causal factor might help managers (Martocchio & Harrison, 1993). Second, managerial work is by nature less monitored with regard to compliance with attendance rules compared with the work of non-managerial employees. Third, managerial work involves representational and informational functions often carried out in the territories of other organizations, thus making it difficult to assess attendance behaviour. Fourth, managers are often exempt from following the official attendance policy as one of the fringe benefits of their position (Rhodes & Steers, 1990, p. 58). In the educational system under study, school principals and vice-principals were expected to follow the same attendance rules as other teachers, and their absences were recorded according to the same procedures applied to rank-and-file teachers.
We argue that the absence behaviour of supervisory personnel should become a focus of absenteeism research. The organizational impact of managers' absence behaviour is far more significant than that of their subordinates. Managers are responsible for monitoring and controlling other employees' absence behaviour. Furthermore, their absence behaviours may affect that of their subordinates either directly (Atkin & Goodman, 1984) or by determining in part the organization's absence culture (Martocchio, 1994; Nicholson & Johns, 1985).
The objective of our research was to systematically investigate the effects of promotions to supervisory positions on subsequent changes in the promotees' absence behaviours. Following past research that found that absenteeism is generally lower among those holding supervisory and managerial positions as compared with rank-and-file employees, yet another objective was to investigate if this finding holds for quasi-managerial positions. In addition, for each position level, we sought to compare veterans to newly appointed supervisory personnel with regard to yearly changes in their absence behaviour. The comparison group used throughout the study comprised rank-and-file employees. Several managerial approaches, including decentralization, empowerment and job enrichment, emphasize the creation and the appointment of employees to quasi-supervisory roles such as group leaders (Howard, 1995). Therefore, research that contributes to our understanding of the impact such appointments on the appointees' absence behaviour could improve our assessment of their effectiveness.
Schools are relatively flat structures, with very few hierarchical levels or supervisory positions and limited promotion opportunities. Given the reward and prestige structure of schools, holding or being promoted to a supervisory position represents achieving a highly valued and rare resource (Rosenblatt & Inbal, 1999). Four categories of school positions were included in our study: homeroom teachers, subject matter or class coordinators (referred to as coordinators), vice principals and principals. Teachers in the positions of homeroom teachers and coordinators have primarily pedagogical responsibilities and, in addition, they fulfil quasi-supervisory roles akin to those of group leaders in other work organizations. The quasi-supervisory tasks fulfilled by homeroom teachers include overseeing students' attendance, discipline, interacting with parents and coordinating their students' grading processes by interacting with other relevant teachers. Coordinators are in charge of teacher teamwork, inter-class activities and mediate between principals and teachers. However, while coordinators supervise teachers in some respects, homeroom teachers do not have direct supervisory responsibilities. The other two school position categories, vice-principals and principals, represent managerial positions. For the sake of simplicity, we refer to all four categories as supervisory positions. Rank-and-file teachers represent all teachers who do not fulfil any of the four positions considered above. The study focuses on current occupants of the four school positions and those recently promoted to them. The context of this study--elementary and middle schools--is a promising one for testing our hypotheses since it homogenizes the occupational and organizational context under study making for a cross-school similarity in the meaning of organizational layers.
Hypotheses
We have used as our criteria two facets of absence behaviour, spells (or frequency) and time lost in absenteeism, since past reviews considered them as the key facets of the phenomenon under study (Atkin & Goodman, 1984; Rhodes & Steers, 1990). Past research has shown that time lost in absences reflect involuntary or sickness-related absence behaviour (Hackett & Guion, 1985), while spells of absenteeism was noted to be more sensitive to work-related characteristics such as level of job stress (Johns, 2003). Consequently, and following the pattern found in past absenteeism research that measured both (e.g. Johns, 1997), we hypothesize that job related characteristics will more powerfully explain spells rather than time lost in absences (Hypothesis 1).
We expected to find a negative relationship between position level and absenteeism. The higher the supervisory level, the more relevant one's responsibilities and job duties to the daily functioning of the organization and the more difficult it is to fill in for the absentee supervisor. These factors increase the likelihood of supervisors being more likely than rank-and-file employees to attend work rather than engage in absenteeism (Rosse & Miller, 1984). Several studies have found that the higher the managerial level, the higher the amount of time spent at work (cf. Blau, 1986). Differences in hierarchical levels are associated with differences in organizational power, pay, social status and job design facets such as autonomy and variety (cf. MacEachron, 1977), which, in a longitudinal study, were found to be durable predictors of reduced absence behaviour (Rentsch & Steel, 1998). In the teaching profession, teachers can make their jobs more meaningful, varied and autonomous by assuming supervisory positions (Rosenblatt & Inbal, 1999). Relevant evidence (Rosenblatt, 2001) indicates that teachers occupying even the quasi-supervisory positions of homeroom teachers and coordinators report higher skill variety and autonomy, job characteristics found to be among the best predictors of lower levels of absence behaviour in a meta-analytic study (Fried & Ferris, 1987).
We could not identify any prior study that has investigated the effect of holding quasi-supervisory positions such as group leaders, analogous to coordinators and homeroom teachers in the current study, on absence behaviour. Only two studies have directly tested the association of holding a managerial position with absences. Dilts, Deitsch, and Paul (1985) supported the decrease in absences hypothesis. However, Cooper and Bramwell (1992) found that absence spells among managers significantly exceeded those of shop floor employees while the reverse was true for the number of incapacity days in sickness absence. Thus, past research has been inconclusive with regard to...
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