In this project, the research team will study how members of a meaningful social unit in construction develop an informal and shared understanding of the extent to which absence is acceptable, tolerable, and legitimate (i.e., absence culture), and consequently, how this affects workers' absence behavior. Studies attempting to understand and solve the issues of absence behavior in the workplace traditionally have focused on individual causes of absence. However, these attempts to identify and remove individual causes have received only modest empirical support. Instead, the view that absence emerges from an individual's social or cultural environment (the absence culture) has become increasingly popular. We aim to study how such relationships can be seen in situations like construction where workers move from jobsite to jobsite. In addition, we will study how absence culture rooted in primary workgroups affect individual decisions related to absence in these situations. The specific objectives of this research are: 1) to identify the feedback processes between individual absence behavior and absence culture, focusing on how the social context affects individual behavior and how a culture forms on construction jobsites; 2) to apply computer simulation techniques to study complex and multi-determined job behaviors like absenteeism; and 3) to incorporate the impact absenteeism-related policies have on both absenteeism levels and construction performance into the boundary of the modeling scope, so that diverse policies can be simulated and tested prior to execution.
In terms of broader impacts, the study will provide practical insights into absence-control policies thatcan foster positive work cultures and promote employee attendance. Employee absenteeism is a costly problem in the U.S. construction industry, so it is hoped the results can matter to competitiveness. Positive work cultures can also lead to the achievement of a significant increase in the productivity, quality, and safety of construction work. The findings of this research can also be applied to the study of other work outcomes, such as performance, citizenship, lateness, and turnover.
