CHAPTER – II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In the opinion of Dakely C.A. (1948) 1“Absenteeism is the ratio of

the number of production man-days or shifts lost to the total number of
production scheduled to work”.

The labour bureau (1962)2 defines absenteeism as the total shifts lost
because of absence as percentage of the total number of man shifts
scheduled to work. Likewise Hackett J.D (1929) defines it as “the temporary
cessation of work for not less than one whole working day initiative of the
worker when his presence is expected by the employer”. Similarly
encyclopaedia of social science observes “Absenteeism as the time lost in
industrial establishment by avoidable or unavoidable absence of employees.
The time lost by the strikes or by lateness amounting to an hour or two is not
usually included”.

Knowles (19793) opined that although absence from work may be due
to any of a large number of factors, empirical evidence supporting the view
that causal factors can be organizational in nature is scant. Absence may be
regarded as one facet of a wider behavioural problem pervading entire
organizational sub-units. The author suggests that absence could be used
along with other variables as a valuable personnel statistic indicating areas
of organisational dysfunction. This means that if levels of absenteeism in

1
Dakely C.A. (1948) “Organisationally Induced Absentee ism”, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 21, No. 3, 351-
357.
2
Likewise Hackett J.D (1929), Human resource and Personnel Management, Tata Mc Graw Hilll.
3
Knowles (1979 ), Principles Business Organizational Management, EurasiaPublishing House
 such cases as these were to be improved the solution should be looked for at
the organisational level rather than at the individual or job level.

Gibert. Et.al., (1992)4 Studied if continuous exposure to air

conditioning during working hours has an observable effect on health.
Absenteeism from ill health recorded by company doctors was compared in
two groups of employees of the French National Electric and Gas Company
in western France, working in similar jobs and spending most of their time
in either air- conditioned offices or a natural atmosphere. No difference
between the two groups was observed during the two years studied with
respect to the incidence, duration or frequency of medically-related
absences. A similar investigation of absences due only to respiratory
diseases resulted in the same conclusion. This study showed that air-
conditioning has no major effects on health.

Chevalier.et.al., (19935) Studied the health status of electricity

workers exposed to electromagnetic fields during their job. Two groups of
exposed workers were studied from 1978 to 1993: the live line workers (n =
121) and the substation workers (n = 232.7) of the French Electricity
Company (EDF). A control group was randomly selected from all the
company non-management male employees; one control for each exposed
subject was matched for the first year of employment. Absenteeism indices
and mortality rates were computed and compared in the exposed and control
groups. The absence rates were 1 .98% in the substation workers and 2.5%
in the control group (p<0.001) and 2.7% in the live-line workers and 2.8% in

4
. Gibert, I., A. Chevalier and J. Lambrozo, (1992) “No Difference in Rates of Absenteeism between Workers in Air
Conditioned Offices and Naturally Ventilated Ones: A Data Base Study”, International Society of the Built Environ -
ment, Indoor and Built Environment, Vol. 1, No. 5,279-284.
5
Chevalier.et.al., (1993). Absenteeism and mortality of workers exposed to electromagnetic fields in the French
Electricity Company
 the control group (NS). No effect of the length of exposure was found.
However the medical causes of sickness absence were different: exposed
employees had less psychiatric and respiratory diseases but more accidents
at work than their control group. Relative risks of accidents at work were 1.2
[95% confidence interval (Cl) = 1.08–1.33] for substation workers and 3.22
(Cl = 1.78–5.88) for live line workers. EDF electromagnetic field exposed
workers seemed not to be affected by any specific health problems except
for an excess of accidents at work.

Morrow. Et.al., (1999)6 in their study established a positive

relationship between absenteeism and voluntary turnover and a negative
relationship between performance and turnover. An examination of the
turnover literature, however, reveals virtually no consideration of a possible
interaction between these two predictors of turnover. In order to test for such
an interaction, company record data were collected from a sample of
nonexempt classification employees within a large regional life insurance
company.

Records revealed that 113 of the company’s 816 employees had

voluntarily left the firm over a 2-year period. Company data on these
“leavers” were compared with data on a random sample of 113 employees
who stayed. Logistic regression, as opposed to ordinary least-squares
regression, was used to determine the effects of prior absenteeism and
performance ratings on voluntary turnover, over and above the effects of
demographic factors. Results supported known relationships between
absenteeism (as measured by sick leave usage), performance ratings, and

6
Morrow. Et.al. (1999). The relationship between perceived stress and self-reported illness-related absenteeism.
American Journal of Health Promotion, 11, 54-61.
 voluntary turnover, but did not reveal a significant interaction effect, even
over multiple time frames. Results are discussed in terms of the potential
uses of company record data for early detection of voluntary turnover.

Hoeven and de Jong (2007)7 reported that absenteeism figures are

increasingly applied as an integrated measure of health in the working
population. However, a comprehensive overview of employee well-being
(compromising the relative impact of physical, psychological, and
organizational components) and how this relates to reported absence
frequency and duration is still lacking. The present study investigates these
relationships.

The study has been conducted in a Dutch subsidiary of an

international financial consultancy firm. Three types of data collection were
used: a web-based survey among the firm’s employees, a physical health
check, and the employees’ absence rates reported to the company. Together
the questionnaire and the health check included the following clusters of
independent variables: (a) personal characteristics, (b) job characteristics, (c)
physical health, (d) self-reported well-being, and (e) perceptions of
organization and communication. Of the 5 clusters of variables, the
perceptions of organization and communication variables appeared to be the
strongest predictors of absence frequency. This study did not find the
assumed relationship between physical related wellbeing and individual
absence duration. Indian industries experience absenteeism as a major
personal problem measurement of absenteeism. The measurement of
absenteeism can be expressed as the ratio of the total amount of time lost

7
Hoeven and de Jong (2007). Job stress and employee behaviors. Organizational Behavior & Decision Processes,
23, 373-387.
 through non-attendance to the planned working time. A calculation of
absenteeism rate can be made in terms of Mondays lost.

Conceptually, absenteeism and turnover are behaviors that have

attracted a great deal of attention from scholars (Harrison and Martocchio,
19988). Yet, there is a limited number of nursing studies dealing with
absenteeism, and those that do generally assign greater importance to
turnover than absence. Both turnover and absence may be termed
withdrawal behaviors, as they involve withdrawal from work . The causes
for these two behaviors are also interrelated. They both stem from the same
underlying motivation to escape a dissatisfying job. Many theories
hypothesize that people who dislike their jobs will avoid them, either
permanently by quitting or temporarily by being absent or coming in late.
These withdrawal behaviors have received a good deal of attention in the
literature, but further examination of them is needed in general and in
nursing organizations in particular.

Absenteeism has many forms in different organizations, a fact that

makes it difficult to isolate its determinants. This study showed, not
surprisingly, that in addition to the carryover effect of prior absenteeism, job
satisfaction is the clearest and most consistent determinant of absenteeism,
often regardless of how absenteeism is measured. The findings here thus
support the notion that job satisfaction plays a critical role in an employee’s
decision to be absent (Spector, 19979). The effect of job satisfaction should
be viewed relative to the lack of significant effect of all commitment forms.

8
Harrison, D.A. and Martocchio, J.J. (1998), “Time for absenteeism: a 20-year review of origins, offshoots, and
outcomes”, Journal of Management, Vol. 24, pp. 305-50.
9
Spector, P.E. (1997), Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences, Sage, Thousand Oaks,
CA
 Both commitment and job satisfaction are work attitudes but evidence so far,
Predicting absenteeism and turnover 427 including here, has demonstrated
the limited effect of commitment on absenteeism. The findings here even
showed that the inclusion of commitment forms only worsened the
prediction of absenteeism. The inclusion of occupational commitment that
was expected to increase the prediction of absenteeism did not change the
above conclusion. Absenteeism seems to be affected by short term
circumstances represented by job satisfaction. Commitment represents a
longer term process than job satisfaction and therefore has a very limited
effect on absenteeism.

The term “absenteeism” originates from the Latin word,

“absentia" . Although there is not a standard definition of absenteeism, it is
extensively used to describe non-attendance of employees for scheduled
work (Banks et al. 2012)10.

The phenomenon of absenteeism entered into the public

consciousness in 1904, when the term “absenteeism” appeared in New
York Times (Patton, 200511). Absenteeism started to attract scholarly
attention in 1940’s with the appearance of the first empirical studies on
the causes and consequences of absenteeism.

The statistics reflect that employee absenteeism produces dramatic

costs to national economies in terms of lost productivity. For example, the
Statistics Canada (2014) reports that the average absenteeism rate per full-

10
Banks, Jessie, Patel, Cynthia J., Moola, Mohammed A., “Perceptions of Inequity in the Workplace:
Exploring the Link with Unauthorised Absenteeism”, SA Journal of Human Resource Management, Volume
10, Number 1, Pages 1-8, 2012.
11
Patton, Eric, “One Hundred Years of Absenteeism in the News: A Window into the Social Expectations
Surrounding Absence from Work”, Proceedings of Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences
Association of Canada, Volume 26, Number 24, Pages 1-13, 2005.
 time worker was 9.2 days in 2013. The direct cost of absenteeism to the
Canadian economy in 2012 was estimated by The Conference Board of
Canada (2013) to be as $16.6 billion. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics (2014), the absence rate for 2013 was 2.9% in US. The annual cost
of absences to U.S. employers amounts to more than $74 billion (Weiner,
2010). In UK, the figures have shown that the average number of lost days
was 9.8 per employee in 2013 (Stevens, 2013), amounting to a total of 131
million lost days of work (ONS, 2014).

It has been calculated that the annual cost of sickness absenteeism

to UK companies is about £29 billion (Stevens, 2013). The empirical
findings on employee absenteeism with regard to certain demographic
factors have been reported widely. For example, Markussen et al (2009)12
pointed out the relationship between absence behavior and age, indicating
a sharp decline at older ages (up to around 45 years). Similarly, Keller
(2008) reported in his study among 367 service employees that age
was significantly correlated to absenteeism. Numerous studies were
intended to find out the impact of gender on absence behavior.

For instance, Markussen et al. (2009) concluded that female

employees had much higher absence rates than male employees, regardless
of being married or not, having children or not. Laaksonen et al (2007)13
reached a similar conclusion in their study on sex differences among 5470
female and 1464 male employees over 2 years (2000-2002) in Finland.
However, the findings of the study by Keller (2008) seem to provide little

12
Markussen, Simen, Roed, Knut, Rogeberg, Ole J. and Gaure, Simen, The Anatomy of Absenteeism, IZA Discussion
Paper (No. 4240), Bonn, 2009.
13
Laaksonen n, M., Martikainen P., Rahkonen, O. and Lahelma, E., “Explanations for Gender Differences in Sickness
Absence: Evidence from Middle-Aged Municipal Employees from Finland”, Occupational and Environmental
Medicine, Volume 65, Number 5, 325-330, 2008.
 contrary evidence. Experience is another studied factor affecting
absenteeism. He found that years of experience were significantly
related to absenteeism.

Consistent with these results, Adebayo and Nwabuoku (2008)14

revealed that working experience was significantly and positively
correlated with absenteeism. The study supports the view that absenteeism
is associated with experience. Examining the relationship between family
responsibilities and employee absenteeism, demonstrated the significant
impact of marital status and the number of dependents on the
frequency of absenteeism. Adebayo and Nwabuoku (2008) also confirmed
the significant correlation of absenteeism with marital status. Similarly
Langenhoff (2011) 15 noted a negative relationship between absenteeism
and family size.

In addition to the above, some studies have investigated other factors

influencing absenteeism such as tenure (Keller, 2008), stress (Marzec, 2013;
Darr, 2004), level of education (Langenhoff, 2011), country of origin
(Hansen et al., 2013) and local unemployment rate (Scoppa and Vuri, 2012).
The studies also identify several organizational variables that directly
or indirectly affect employee absenteeism. In that context, job satisfaction
is considered as the key explanatory variable. For example, a study by
Kehinde (2011) concluded that there was a significant correlation between
absenteeism and overall job satisfaction.

14
Adebayo, Sulaiman O. and Nwabuoku, Chris U., “Conscientiousness and Perceived Organizational Support
as Predictors of Employee Absenteeism”, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Volume 5, Number 4, Pages
363-367, 2008.
15
Langenhoff, Wouter, Employee Absenteeism: Construction of a Model for International Comparison of
Influential Determinants, Master Thesis, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 2011.
 Similarly, Cohen and Golan (2007)16 indicated that among work
attitudes, job satisfaction had a strong impact on absenteeism. Contrary to
these findings, a study by Mashonganyika (2004)17 observed an
insignificant relationship between overall job satisfaction and
absenteeism. Drakopoulos and Grimani (2011)18 found that injury
absenteeism was weakly connected to job satisfaction in their sample.
Additionally, other organizational factors have been reported likely to
have an impact on absence behavior including ownership structure ,
organizational trust , transformational leadership, job characteristics and
psychological empowerment , peer group effect, and pay level.

16
Cohen, Aaron and Golan, Ronit, “Predicting Absenteeism and Turnover Intentions by Past Absenteeism and
Work Attitudes”, Career Development International, Volume 12, Number 5, Pages 416-432, 2007.
17
Mashonganyika, Oswald, The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: A Study of The Shop Floor
Workers in a Motor Manufacturing Plant, Master Thesis, Rhodes University, South Africa, 2004
18
Drakopoulos, Stavros, A. and Aikaterini, Grimani, The Relationship between Absence from Work and Job
Satisfaction: Greece and UK Comparisons, MPRA Paper, 2011