JOURNAL OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR

ARTICLE NO.

52, 156171 (1998)

VB971581

Employee Absenteeism, Organizational Commitment,

and Job Satisfaction: Another Look
Abraham Sagie
School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University, 52900, Ramat Gan, Israel
Previous research suggested weak relations between work attitudes and indirect
measures of employee absenteeism (e.g., frequency and time-lost; Hackett, 1989). In
the present study, absences were regarded as voluntary or involuntary based on the
reasons provided by the employees or supervisors. It was hypothesized that voluntary
as opposed to involuntary absenteeism can be predicted by organizational commitment,
job satisfaction, and their interactive effect. Intention to quit was expected to predict
voluntary absenteeism as well. Subjects were 140 clerks in an Israeli municipality
(average age was 41). Moderated multiple regression analyses of attitudes and objective (personnel records) or subjective (self-reported) absence data yielded support for
the first hypothesis. Nonetheless, the intention to quit was not significantly related to
either type of absence. Theoretical and methodological considerations were discussed
and implications for continued research were outlined. q 1998 Academic Press

Employee absenteeism is a costly personnel problem attracting the attention

of theoreticians and practitioners alike (Hackett, 1989). Considerable research
on this topic has concerned the links between absence from work and workrelated attitudes such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
Hanisch and Hulin (1991) theorized that absenteeism and other withdrawal
behaviors (e.g., lateness, turnover) reflect invisible attitudes such as job
dissatisfaction, low level of organizational commitment, or an intention to
quit. According to this view, an employee who is absent from work is consciously or unconsciously expressing negative attachment to the organization.
Furthermore, for a lowly committed or dissatisfied employee, absence can
have a positive role (Rosse & Miller, 1984). It may provide him or her an
opportunity to avoid the negative emotions associated with work. Conversely,
employees who are highly satisfied with their jobs or strongly committed to
the organization will avoid withdrawal behaviors and maintain continued
attachment to work (Blau & Boal, 1987).
The author thanks Rebecca Isaacs Darshan, Miriam Krausz, and two anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Abraham Sagie, School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.
156
0001-8791/98 $25.00
Copyright q 1998 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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ABSENTEEISM AND ATTITUDES

Continuing with this line of reasoning, several causal models (Brooke &
Price, 1989; Gellatly, 1995; Hanisch and Hulin, 1991; Steers & Rhodes, 1978)
have included work-related attitudes and intentions among the determinants
of absence behavior. Accordingly, higher organizational commitment or job
satisfaction and a lower desire to quit imply lower absence rates. Yet research
spanning almost half a century has shown little evidence that a meaningful and
consistent attitudeabsenteeism relation does exist (Hackett, 1989; Hackett &
Guion, 1985; Mayer & Schoorman, 1992; Randall, 1990; Terborg, Lee, Smith,
Davis, & Turbin, 1982). Unlike other withdrawal behaviors that have shown to
be at least moderately related to job satisfaction or organizational commitment
(Koslowsky, Sagie, Krausz, & Dolman, 1997; Lee, Ashford, Walsh, & Mowday, 1992; Randall, 1990), poorer correlations were observed between absenteeism and work attitudes.
Many researchers (cf. Clegg, 1983; Adler & Golan, 1981; Johns, 1994a,b)
have proposed that the specific methods used for measuring absence may
influence the magnitude of its relations with work-related attitudes. They
suggested that the weak empirical relations are more a function of the poor
absence measurement than of substantive causes. In light of this proposition,
the aim of the present study was to use more efficient measures of absence
in order to reassess these relations. Relevant classifications of absence behaviors and their measures are described below.
Measurement of Absence
March and Simon (1958) have distinguished between two basic types of
absences: involuntary (e.g., certified sickness, funeral attendance) and voluntary (e.g., vacation, uncertified sickness). Voluntary absences are under the
direct control of the employee and are frequently utilized for personal aims
such as testing the market for alternative employment prospects (Miller,
1981). Conversely, involuntary absences are beyond the employees immediate control. Hence, voluntary rather than involuntary absences from work
may reflect job dissatisfaction and lack of commitment to the organization.
Consequently, one may expect that work attitudes will be more negatively
related to voluntary absence than to involuntary absence.
Yet, the research has yielded conflicting results regarding this hypothesis.
Although several supporting results were reported (Dwyer & Ganster, 1991;
Mathieu & Kohler, 1990a; Scott & Taylor, 1985; Zaccaro & Collins, 1988),
the final conclusion of two comprehensive reviews of the literature was that
little variation in reported correlations between absence and satisfaction can
be attributed to the type of absence measure used, whether voluntary or
involuntary (Hackett & Guion, 1985, p. 355; Hackett, 1989). Similar results
were achieved with regard to organizational commitment. The relation between commitment and voluntary absence was not higher than the respective
commitmentinvoluntary absence relation (Randall, 1990).
In this study, I proposed that better measurement of both voluntary and

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involuntary absence may clarify the differential relations between these two
absence categories and work-related attitudes. More specifically, by substituting direct indices of absence (i.e., causes provided by employees or supervisors) for indirect ones (i.e., the voluntary and involuntary categories are
indirectly inferred), higher correlations will be found for attitudes with voluntary than with involuntary absence.
Most of the current research on absenteeism has relied upon frequency and
time lost indices, two indirect measures of voluntary and involuntary absence,
respectively. The frequency index counts each absence occurrence interval
over a specified time regardless of the reason for the absence. The time lost
index aggregates all the time (working days) that an employee is absent from
work during a certain period without considering the explanation given by
him or her. Hence, a 3-day absence is counted as one absence on the frequency
index and three on the time lost measure. The rationale for using these two
indirect measures for the two absence types is that one has more control over
the frequency of absence (i.e., it is more voluntary) than over its duration
(involuntary).
Adler and Golan (1981) and Driver and Watson (1989) criticized the use
of these indirect measures to distinguish the two types of absence. Lengthy
absences may be due to voluntary causes such as uncertified illness, whereas
several short absences may be due to certified sickness. These authors claimed
that the unfortunate use of frequency as a measure of voluntary absence and
duration as a measure of involuntary absence has resulted in both conceptual
confusion and measurement contamination. For this reason, direct assessments
that distinguish between voluntary and involuntary absences are necessary.
Direct measures of absence involve classifying the time lost according to the
reasons for absence documented in the personnel records or reported by the
employees (Brooke & Price, 1989; Mathieu & Kohler, 1990a). It is accepted
that the workers and supervisors subjective explanations could be biased
(Johns, 1994b; Landy, Vasey, & Smith, 1984). Nonetheless, the use of strict
and systematic guidelines can increase their accuracy (Mathieu & Kohler,
1990a) as well as the differential relations of voluntary and involuntary absence with work-related attitudes.
Another issue in the measurement of absence relates to the use of personnel
records versus the use of self-reports. The majority of research on absenteeism
has used records obtained from personnel departments or other valid organizational sources (Johns, 1994b). However, more subjective information, i.e.,
employees self-reported absences, has been used as well (Brooke & Price,
1989; Spector, 1987). Both sources of data are moderately correlated; nine
studies reviewed by Johns (1994b) reported 11 correlations ranging from .30
to .92. Hence, self-reports can be considered a moderately valid measure of
actual absenteeism, although a self-serving bias (e.g., an inclination to dissociate oneself from the negative connotations of absenteeism) may cause a
systematic underreporting of lost working days (Johns, 1994a,b). Neverthe-

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less, the use of a shorter reporting time span and an availability of personal
notes and documents may improve both the validity and the accuracy of selfreports (Johns, 1994b).
Data gathered from either personnel records or self reports may be classified
into the voluntary or involuntary absence types according to either direct
indices (i.e., causes provided by employees or supervisors) or indirect ones
(e.g., frequency and time lost). It is proposed here that the use of direct
absence indices in combination with both personnel records and self-reports
may enhance the work attitudesvoluntary absence relations. These relations
will be higher than the respective associations between work attitudes and
involuntary absence obtained on direct measures.
Work-Related Attitudes
Previous studies examined either the relation between organizational commitment and absenteeism, or that between job satisfaction and absenteeism.
Although organizational commitment and job satisfaction are highly correlated, they constitute empirically distinct constructs (Brooke, Russell, & Price,
1988; Glisson & Durick, 1988; Shore, Newton, & Thornton, 1990). Organizational commitment reflects an attachment to the overall organization rather
than to some part of it (e.g., job). It is more stable over time than job
satisfaction and is less seriously affected by transitory events (Mowday,
Steers, & Porter, 1979). In addition, organizational commitment is more
strongly affected by organizational factors including leadership, culture, values, and norms (Cohen, 1992; Gellatly, 1995; Markham & McKee, 1995;
Mathieu & Kohler, 1990b; Sagie, 1993), whereas job considerations (e.g.,
performance; Shore et al., 1990) as well as off-the-job satisfaction (Rain,
Lane, & Steiner, 1991) have a greater impact on job satisfaction.
Adopting Gellatlys (1995) theoretical approach that absence behavior is
a consequence of ones work-related attitudes, it could be expected that both
organizational commitment and job satisfaction will be negatively correlated
with volitional absenteeism. The voluntary absence rate of a more satisfied
or more committed person will be lower than that of a less satisfied or
less committed person. Nevertheless, voluntary absences of a highly satisfied
individual are not expected to further decrease as organizational commitment
increases, due to a threshold effect (or range restriction; Hunter & Schmidt,
1990). Similarly, a highly committed worker is supposed to be intentionally
absent from work only rarely, so there is not much room for a further decrease
in his or her voluntary absence (e.g., vacation) due to higher levels of job
satisfaction. Consequently, the interaction between the two attitudes is likely
to have a significant positive effect on absence. In other words, the total
negative effect of the two related attitudes on absence is lower than the sum
of their negative individual effects. Blau (1986), Blau and Boal (1989), and
Mathieu and Kohler (1990a) observed similar interactive effects concerning
organizational commitment and job involvement.

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Another work-related attitude examined in this study is intention to leave

the organization. Based on Millers (1981; Hackett & Guion, 1985) observation that the most appropriate interpretation of voluntary absenteeism is market testing for alternative employment prospects, one may predict that an
intention to quit would be positively associated with the rate of voluntary as
opposed to involuntary absences.
In the present study I tapped employees work-related attitudes; absence
days were then collected from both personnel records and self-reports, and
classified into the voluntary and involuntary categories by means of direct
measures. Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and their interaction,
as well as the intention to quit measure, were then used to predict absence
duration, after controlling for relevant biographical variables (e.g., sex, age,
seniority; Clegg, 1983; Cohen, 1991; Zaccaro, Craig, & Quinn, 1991).
Four hypotheses were tested. First, job satisfaction and organizational commitment will predict voluntary absence behavior; absence will be negatively
correlated with either attitude. Second, the interactive effect of both attitudes
will predict voluntary absence; the relation will be positive. Third, the intention to leave the organization will predict voluntary absence; the relation
will be positive. Finally, all the attitudeabsence relations will be lower for
involuntary compared to voluntary absence.
METHOD

Site
The study was undertaken in a municipality of a medium-sized town in
Israel. Three hundred twenty employees worked in the municipality offices,
all located in one main and several adjacent buildings. Similar to most of the
Israeli public organizations, this workplace is unionized. In 1991, the year
that preceded the data collection, turnover rate for full-time employees was
3%, a low rate compared with other research sites [the median rate in McEvoy
and Cascios (1987) metaanalysis was 22%]. According to the files of the
personnel department, mean absence (voluntary and involuntary included) in
1991 was 37 working days per employee. It should be noted that absence
rates in Israel are higher than in most Western countries, because of the liberal
Israeli work agreements and army obligatory service for civilians serving in
the IDF reserve forces (frequently one month per year). Based on 1992 data
taken from the Israeli annual Statistical Abstract (The Israeli Central Bureau
of Statistics, 1993), a worker loses an average of 34.4 working days a year.
Similar figures were calculated for the two successive years, 1993 and 1994.
The municipality work procedures require a priori approval of all nonemergency absences by superiors. Employees accrue their paid annual vacation
(normally 14 working days per year, and more than that for higher-rank
clerks) and certified sick leave. In addition, according to the work agreements,
a worker is entitled to take two uncertified sick days a year without violating

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work rules. Frequent other leave categories are army service (primarily for
men), child birth or sickness (mainly for women), and unpaid vacation. The
personnel department periodically provides each employee with a report including total time (in working days) that had been taken off in the preceding
period, classified into several categories (e.g., sickness, vacation). This report
also includes the total vacation days to which he or she is entitled at the
reporting date.
Two waves of data were collected during the period December 1991 to
April 1992. The first wave captured work-related attitudes of the municipality
workers and the second, gathered three months later, included data regarding
the workers attendance and absenteeism during the period that followed the
initial survey.
Sample
During the first phase of data collection, questionnaires were administered
to 197 full-time clerks, 157 of whom provided usable data, yielding a response
rate of 79%. Data gathered in the second phase were matched for 140 (89%)
of the original sample; the remaining 17 workers were not present at the time
of the second data collection or refused to participate in the second phase.
Women composed 58.5% (82) of the final sample. Respondents ranged in
age from 21 to 64 years, with a mean of 41. They ranged in seniority from
1 to 39 years, with a mean of 13. Sixty-four (46%) of the respondents completed high school, of whom 20 (14%) had some higher education.
No significant differences in gender composition, tenure, or age were observed between the 140 persons who provided matched data and their 17
colleagues who failed to do so. Yet, the education level of the latter group
was lower than that of the former one.
Measures
The first survey included biographical data (i.e., age, sex, education, seniority) as well as the following variables:
Organizational commitment. A Hebrew version of the Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulians (1974) 15-item scale was employed in the study. The
scale was adapted for use in Israel including a back-translation into English
before its use on previous studies (e.g., Sagie & Koslowsky, 1996). An ascending 5-point answer scale was used. The coefficient alpha was .62.
General job satisfaction. A well-tested short Hebrew form of the Minnesota
Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967) was
used together with an ascending 5-point answer scale. The coefficient alpha
for the 20-item scale was .70.
Intention to quit. This measure was assessed by Spector and Jexs (1991)
one-item scale, namely To what extent do you intend to quit your job during
the next year? (the item was translated into Hebrew for use in this study).
An ascending 5-point answer scale was used.

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Absence. Objective (personnel records) and subjective (self-report) measures of absenteeism (Mathieu & Kohler, 1990a) were evaluated at the second
stage of data collection. These measures tapped the number of workdays
during the past 3 months that were taken off for any of the following five
reasons: certified sickness, uncertified sickness, family obligations (e.g., childillness, marriage, funeral), vacation (paid or non-paid), and other reasons
(such as personal affairs, community activities, or unexcused absence). Certified sickness and family obligation are normally beyond the employees control and were classified as involuntary. Conversely, uncertified sickness, vacation, and other reasons are typically under ones control (even if such absences
should be approved by ones superior) and were regarded as voluntary.
Procedure
Prior to the data collection, I interviewed the municipality personnel manager and two of his assistants. Relevant information regarding attendance
policy and procedures was gathered, and was used in the study planning.
The interviewees indicated their belief that based on personal records and
attendance reports provided by the personnel department, most of the workers
had a high recollection regarding their attendance and absence. This belief is
consistent with previous findings (Johns, 1994a,b).
At the first stage of the study, I met with the municipality employees to
explain the aim of the study, and then administered a work-attitudes questionnaire to each employee individually. Identity numbers were recorded in order
to pair the initial responses with subsequent data. The respondents were
assured that all survey information would remain confidential. Three months
later, a second wave of data was collected. It included self-reports and personnel records regarding the attendance and absenteeism of the respondents
during this 3-month period, January to March. Relative to other seasons,
vacations during these three winter months are relatively scarce for Israeli
employees. Illness rates tend, however, to be meaningfully higher in this
season.
The self-reports containing absence occurrences were registered individually by the employees. I asked the respondents to provide their identity numbers again in order to match their previous data. Respondents were encouraged
to consult their diaries in order to provide the most accurate information
concerning absences and their reasons. No reference was made during the
meeting to the personnel records; in fact, these records only became available
later for research.
RESULTS

Summary descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations among the study

variables are presented in Table 1. The table includes four measures of absence
data, resulting from the two sources (personnel records and self reports) of
the two absence types (voluntary and involuntary). Hypotheses 1 through 3

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5.11
3.80

5.35
4.74

.78
10.6
8.3
.46
.44c
1.16

SD

0.33
0.05

0.40
0.15

.15
.20a
.16
.23b
0.08

.03
.06
0.06

.04
.01

0.17a
0.09

0.05
0.06

Absence (self-reports)

0.11
0.03

Absence (personnel records)

.70c
.11
.15
0.11

0.52c
0.04

0.54c
.00

.74c
0.43c

0.44c
0.12

0.47c
0.08

0.40c

.30c
.05

.30c
.02

.91c
.19a

.05

.14
.85c

.28b

Note. F, female; M, male; org., organizational. An ascending 5-point scale was used for the attitude measures. The absence measures denote the number
of days, during a 3-month period, in which the employee was voluntarily or involuntarily absent from work.
a
p .05; bp .01; cp .001.

5.56
4.08

9. Voluntary
10. Involuntary

1.4
40.7
12.9
3.13
3.15
3.08

6.10
3.96

Sex (F 1; M 2)
Age
Seniority
Org. commitment
Job satisfaction
Intention to quit

Mean

7. Voluntary
8. Involuntary

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Variable

TABLE 1
Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations, and Comparisons between Voluntary and Involuntary Correlations (N 140)

ABSENTEEISM AND ATTITUDES

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TABLE 2
Hierarchical Regression Analysis
Voluntary absence
R2

Variable

Involuntary absence

R2 change

R2

R2 change

.02

.02

.03

.01

.04

.01

.01

.01

.03

.02

.04

.01

(a) Personnel records

1. Biography
Sex
Age
Seniority
2. Attitudes
Commitment
Satisfaction
Intention to quit
3. Commitment 1
Satisfaction

.20

.20c

0.34
0.22a
.13

0.15
0.08
.03

.42

.22c

01.74
01.25b
.08

2.39b

0.62
0.84
.01

.45

.03b

1.36

(b) Self-reports
1. Biography
Sex
Age
Seniority
2. Attitudes
Commitment
Satisfaction
Intention to quit
3. Commitment 1
Satisfaction

.16

.16c

0.29
0.21a
.04

0.05
0.10
.00

.37

.21c

01.65
01.12a
.08

2.20a

0.69
0.91
.02

.39

.02a

1.45

Note. Sex was coded as 1 for women and 2 for men.

a
p .05; bp .01; cp .001.

were tested by moderated hierarchical regression analysis as shown in Table

2. Finally, a series of t-tests for comparing correlation coefficients was used
to examine the last hypothesis.
Table 1 shows that organizational commitment and job satisfaction were
positively correlated with each other. They were negatively correlated with
intention to quit and with the various absence measures, except for the null
correlation between organizational commitment and objective involuntary
absence. The four absence measures were positively correlated with each
other and with intention to quit. The correlations between objective and subjective indices of a similar absence type (.91 for voluntary absence and .85
for involuntary absence) were much higher than the correlations between
dissimilar types.
Hypotheses 1 through 3 predicted that after controlling for the biographical

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variables (sex, age, and seniority), voluntary as opposed to involuntary absence would be explained by organizational commitment, job satisfaction,
the interaction between commitment and satisfaction, and intention to leave
the organization. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis was used to
test these predictions. In the first step, I entered the biographical variables
into the equation. The logic for entering these variables first was that they
are more stable than the attitudinal variables. In addition, considering the
studys aim, these variables were only nuisance variables that needed to be
controlled (Becker, 1992; Clegg, 1983). Next, organizational commitment,
job satisfaction, and intention to quit were added. Finally, an interaction term
computed as a cross-product of significant predictors in the previous step
(commitment 1 satisfaction) was entered into the regression equation.
Table 2 reports the findings from the regression analysis. None of the
biographical and attitudinal variables explained variance of any of the involuntary indices. Conversely, several variables accounted significantly for the
variance in objective or subjective measure of voluntary absence. Two biographical variables, namely sex and age, were found to be influential: R2
values were .20 (p .001) and .16 (p .001) for the objective and subjective
measures, respectively. The negative betas obtained for sex (coded as 1 for
women and 2 for men) and age imply that significantly more voluntary absence time was reported for women than for men, and for younger rather
than older employees.
Consistent with Hypothesis 1, organizational commitment and job satisfaction were found to explain variance in absence [R2 increments were .22 (p
.001) and .21 (p .001) for personnel records and self-reports, respectively]. High organizational commitment or high job satisfaction was associated with a decreased number of voluntary absence days. As suggested by
the second hypothesis, the commitment 1 satisfaction interactive effect for
the objective and subjective measures of voluntary absenteeism was also
significant: R2 changes were .03 (p .01) and .02 (p .05), respectively.
In order to clarify the nature of this interaction, the sample was divided
into two groups using a median split on job satisfaction levels. Then, voluntary
absence was regressed onto the respondents organizational commitment
scores within each group. The resulting regression lines for the objective case
are depicted in Fig. 1. The figure shows that organizational commitment was
associated with a decreased absence rate for both high and low satisfaction
groups. The slope of the regression line for the low satisfaction group was,
however, steeper than the line for high satisfaction group. Similar trends were
found by using the subjective measures of absenteeism.
Contrary to Hypothesis 3, intention to leave the organization was not related
to the absenteeism measures. It is possible that the covariation of the quit
intentions with the two other attitudes (its correlations with organizational
commitment and job satisfaction were 0.43 and 0.40, respectively; see Table
1) masked its contribution to absence behavior. Although this intention was

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FIG. 1. The interaction of organizational commitment and job satisfaction as related to

voluntary absence (measured by personnel records). j, Low satisfaction; m, high satisfaction.

positively correlated with both the objective and the subjective measures of
voluntary absence, its partial correlations with them, controlling for organizational commitment and job satisfaction, were only .08 and .09, respectively
(not shown in the tables). Thus, the third hypothesis based on Millers (1981)
interpretation still awaits further support.
Finally, the fourth hypothesis, which predicted different correlations between work-related attitudes and absence for different types of absence, was
examined using a t-test for dependent correlations (Cohen & Cohen, 1983).
All the correlations pertaining to voluntary absence consistently exceeded the

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respective correlations involving involuntary measures. Starting with objective data, the commitmentvoluntary absence correlation (0.54) differed significantly from the commitmentinvoluntary absence correlation [r 0;
t(137) 5.42, p .001]. Significant differences were also obtained concerning job satisfaction [rs 0.47 and 0.08, for voluntary and involuntary
absence, respectively; t(137) 3.66, p .001] and concerning intention to
quit [rs .30 and .02, t(137) 3.38, p .05]. Similarly, attitudes correlated
more strongly with self-reported measures of voluntary absence than with
involuntary absence. Significant differences were found between the correlations of voluntary and involuntary absence with organizational commitment
[rs 0.52 and 0.04, respectively; t(137) 5.50, p .001], job satisfaction
[rs 0.44 and 0.12, t(137) 3.38, p .001], and intention to quit [rs
.30 and .05, t(137) 2.55, p .05].
DISCUSSION

This study revisited the relation between work attitudes and voluntary and
involuntary absences. Given that frequency and time lost, the two popular
indirect indices of absence behavior, were weakly correlated with work attitudes, I substituted them with direct measures. Direct measures are based on
the reasons for absence as provided by the employees or supervisors rather
than on situational characteristics. The results are quite impressive; unlike
the previously reported inconsistent links, organizational commitment and job
satisfaction as well as their interaction were strongly related to the aggregated
duration of voluntary absence, but not of involuntary absence.
If these results can be generalized to other work settings, they indicate
that work-related attitudes may have important implications for discretionary
behavior after all. The conventional wisdom may be correct. Unless the situation makes it impossible (e.g., in case of involuntary absence), workers who
are strongly committed to the organization or highly satisfied with their jobs
show up at work more often than those with weak commitment and low
satisfaction. Scholars and practitioners should not lose sight of these relations
just because previous research customarily used indirect indices that led to a
confounding of discretionary and nondiscretionary work behaviors.
It is noteworthy that high correlations between voluntary absence and involuntary absence were achieved not only with objective data, but also when
employee subjective self-reports were used. Unlike Johns (1994a) empirical
results and literature analysis (Johns, 1994b), no consistent underreporting of
absence duration was observed here. This can be explained by the short (3month) time span for self-reports and the detailed feedback provided by
management to the employees, making the researched workplace an almost
ideal one for achieving high compatibility between personnel records and
self-reports (Johns, 1994b). Although it seems that self-reports are still more
subjective and less accurate than data from organizational files, the use of a
short time span and the provision of organizational feedback to employees

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about absence can increase self-report validity. These factors and the provision
of precise definitions of each category of absenteeism may account for the
stronger relation between volitional absence and work-related attitudes than
has been obtained in other studies.
When assessing the generalizability of the current findings, another point
should be considered. Based on the 3-month absence days reported in Table
1, an average of 24 days (including paid vacation days) was voluntarily taken
off per year by the present employees. This figure is not easily comparable
to other studies that customarily excluded vacation days from the total of
voluntary absences (Beehr & Gupta, 1978; Brooke & Price, 1989; Gellatly,
1995; Johns, 1994a). Conversely, the current involuntary absence periods
(about 16 days per year) seem to be longer than the respective periods reported
elsewhere (e.g., 4 sick days a year; Dwyer & Ganster, 1991). Yet, as specified
under Method, army annual obligatory service for workers who are reserve
soldiers is also included. Further factors (e.g., the poorly regulated work
procedures of the Israeli public sector) may affect the number of voluntary
or involuntary absences. Whether these factors are unique to the Israeli culture
(or, perhaps, to the current research site) and the extent to which they influence
absence in other societies are questions awaiting empirical consideration.
Several issues arising from the present study can benefit from continued
research. First, future investigators may want to examine the validity and
reliability of the proposed direct classification scheme of voluntary and involuntary absence when used in combination with either self-reports or more
objective company records. Second, intention to leave the organization failed
to predict significantly voluntary absenteeism, perhaps due to the high intercorrelations among the former variable, job satisfaction, and organizational
commitment. Hence, Millers (1981) proposition that voluntary absences
serve primarily to help market testing for employees considering alternative
employment prospects remains to be tested.
Future researchers should consider using a more reliable multi-item measure of intention to quit rather than the single item used in the present study.
It is also hoped that future research will overcome another limitation of the
present study, namely the mediocre reliability (a .62) of organizational
commitment. Furthermore, a high correlation (.74) was found between both
predictor variables, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However,
as Mathieu and Kohler (1990a) noted, a high correlation between the two
attitudes does not invalidate the interactive effect of both attitudes on voluntary absences. On the contrary, finding a significant interactive effect despite
the high correlation lends greater confidence to the conclusion that this effect
is real. Nevertheless, these measurement issues suggest the need for replication of the present study, perhaps with different measures.
Assuming that further research does support the present findings, some
practical recommendations can be made. From the perspective of management, a high work attitudeabsence correlation is desired, because a survey

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of the former can direct an intervention aimed to reduce the latter. It is

suggested, therefore, that managers provide detailed feedback to employees
about their attendance and absence. Managers are also encouraged to use, in
their feedback, the same reasons for absence documented in the personnel
records. By doing so, classification of absence occurrences will be accepted
by the employees, and management will be able to detect the actual relation
between volitional absence and work attitudes. If this relation is meaningful,
a management program that succeeds in improving attitudes may also be
effective in reducing voluntary absenteeism.
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