'Taking a sickie':Job satisfaction and job involvement as interactive predictors of absenteeism in a public organization

Correlations between absenteeism and work attitudes such as job satisfaction have often been found to be disappointingly weak. As prior work reveals, this might be due to ignoring interactive effects of attitudes with different attitude targets (e.g. job involvement and organizational commitment). Drawing on basic principles in personality research and insights about the situational variability of job satisfaction judgments, we proposed that similar interactions should be present also for attitudes with the same target. More specifically, it was predicted that job involvement affects absenteeism more if job satisfaction is low as this indicates a situation with weak constraints. Both attitudes were assessed in a sample of 436 employees working in a large civil service organization, and two indexes of absence data (frequency and time lost) were drawn from personnel records covering a 12-month period following the survey. Whereas simple correlations were not significant, a moderated regression documented that the hypothesized interaction was significant for both indicators of absence behaviour. As a range of controls (e.g. age, gender, job level) were accounted for, these findings lend strong support to the importance of this new, specific form of attitude interaction. Thus, we encourage researchers not only to consider interactions of attitudes with a different focus (e.g. job vs. organization) but also interactions between job involvement and job satisfaction as this will yield new insights into the complex function of attitudes in influencing absenteeism. © 2007 The British Psychological Society.

Relationship between organisational justice and employee outcomes:a cross-national study

This study examined the influence of organizational justice perceptions on employee work outcome relationships as moderated by individual differences that are influenced by societal culture. Power distance, but not country or individualism, moderated the relationships between perceived justice and satisfaction, performance, and absenteeism. The effects of perceived justice on these outcomes were stronger among individuals scoring lower on power distance index, and most of these study participants were in the U.S. (versus Hong Kong) sample. Limitations of the study and the implications of the findings for managing cross-culturally are discussed.

Managing people and performance:An evidence based framework applied to health service organizations

People and their performance are key to an organization's effectiveness. This review describes an evidence-based framework of the links between some key organizational influences and staff performance, health and well-being. This preliminary framework integrates management and psychological approaches, with the aim of assisting future explanation, prediction and organizational change. Health care is taken as the focus of this review, as there are concerns internationally about health care effectiveness. The framework considers empirical evidence for links between the following organizational levels: 1. Context (organizational culture and inter-group relations; resources, including staffing; physical environment) 2. People management (HRM practices and strategies; job design, workload and teamwork; employee involvement and control over work; leadership and support) 3. Psychological consequences for employees (health and stress; satisfaction and commitment; knowledge, skills and motivation) 4. Employee behaviour (absenteeism and turnover; task and contextual performance; errors and near misses) 5. Organizational performance; patient care. This review contributes to an evidence base for policies and practices of people management and performance management. Its usefulness will depend on future empirical research, using appropriate research designs, sufficient study power and measures that are reliable and valid.

Individual differences in work behaviour of blue-collar workers : a study of rubber tappers in Malaysia

This thesis examines individual differences in work behaviour of rubber tappers. The study examined sex, age, experience and race differences and their interactions with terrain on job performance, absenteeism, and job satisfaction of 1053 rubber tappers. Rubber tappers are unskilled blue-collar workers who essentially do the same type of work and are paid the same rates of pay. There are very few studies that have compared male and female blue-collar workers doing similar jobs in organisational settings. This study is one of the few investigations that examine sex differences in job performance of blue-collar workers doing same job using production data. Studies on age differences in work behaviour encounter numerous methodological difficulties such as high turnover, internal transfers and problems associated with age differences in educational levels. The participation of rubber tappers in this study is envisaged to overcome these difficulties because attrition rates of rubber tappers are low, and internal transfers are non existent. Further, the educational levels of rubber tappers are relatively similar across different age cohorts, as most rubber tappers have little or no education. Two measures of both job performance and absenteeism were derived from payroll records. The two job performance measures were total crop production and attendance. The two absenteeism measures were avoidable and unavoidable absence rates. Overall job satisfaction was determined using a 4-item scale. Significant sex, age, experience and race differences were obtained for job performance, absenteeism and job satisfaction. Significant interactive effects were also obtained for sex, age , experience, race and terrain for job performance and absenteeism. The results are discussed in relation to the abilities and motivation of rubber tappers. The implication of these findings for employee selection and human resource management in rubber estates is discussed.

Employee absence and organizational commitment:moderation effects of age

This study examined the relations of organizational commitment and demographic factors with objectively measured absence frequency data of 106 staff at a UK school, collected over a 1-year period. We found significant associations of commitment and absenteeism, with high affective and normative commitment, and low continuance commitment being associated with lower levels of absence. Age moderated two of these associations, with low normative commitment and high continuance commitment predicting absence most strongly for older workers. Our findings help practitioners and researchers to understand how commitment may interact with other factors to predict absence. Interaction effects in our data showed that absence frequencies tended to be highest for older workers who felt a lower sense of obligation to their organization, or a lack of alternatives to their present employment. © 2012 Hogrefe Publishing.

Leadership and organisational outcomes in healthcare

This research examined to what extent and how leadership is related to organisational outcomes in healthcare. Based on the Job Demands-Resource model, a set of hypotheses was developed, which predicted that the effect of leadership on healthcare outcomes would be mediated by job design, employee engagement, work pressure, opportunity for involvement, and work-life balance. The research focused on the National Health Service (NHS) in England, and examined the relationships between senior leadership, first line supervisory leadership and outcomes. Three years of data (2008 – 2010) were gathered from four data sources: the NHS National Staff Survey, the NHS Inpatient Survey, the NHS Electronic Record, and the NHS Information Centre. The data were drawn from 390 healthcare organisations and over 285,000 staff annually for each of the three years. Parallel mediation regressions modelled both cross sectional and longitudinal designs. The findings revealed strong relationships between senior leadership and supervisor support respectively and job design, engagement, opportunity for involvement, and work-life balance, while senior leadership was also associated with work pressure. Except for job design, there were significant relationships between the mediating variables and the outcomes of patient satisfaction, employee job satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover. Relative importance analysis showed that senior leadership accounted for significantly more variance in relationships with outcomes than supervisor support in the majority of models tested. Results are discussed in relation to theoretical and practical contributions. They suggest that leadership plays a significant role in organisational outcomes in healthcare and that previous research may have underestimated how influential senior leaders may be in relation to these outcomes. Moreover, the research suggests that leaders in healthcare may influence outcomes by the way they manage the work pressure, engagement, opportunity for involvement and work-life balance of those they lead.