A meta‐analysis of the interrelationships between employee lateness, absenteeism, and turnover: Implications for models of withdrawal behavior
verifiedrich profile · Journal of Organizational Behavior · 2011
Berry, Christopher M.; Lelchook, Ariel M.; Clark, Malissa A.
How this was studied
A meta-analytic synthesis — it pools many primary studies rather than running a single design, so there is no single-study diagram.
What this article reports
The findings we extracted from this work, normalized into Principia’s relationship form (X → Y). Each feeds the synthesized models below.
absenteeism → voluntary turnover
lateness → absenteeism
Models this article informs
The meta-analytic priors this article contributes evidence to — its place in the broader synthesis.
absenteeism predicts employee turnover
absenteeism predicts voluntary turnover
lateness predicts absenteeism
In the authors’ words
The article’s own abstract.
Summary We meta‐analyzed the correlations between voluntary employee lateness, absenteeism, and turnover to (i) provide the most comprehensive estimates to date of the interrelationships between these withdrawal behaviors; (ii) test the viability of a withdrawal construct; and (iii) evaluate the evidence for competing models of the relationships between withdrawal behaviors (i.e., alternate forms, compensatory forms, independent forms, progression of withdrawal, and spillover model). Corrected correlations were .26 between lateness and absenteeism, .25 between absenteeism and turnover, and .01 between lateness and turnover. These correlations were even smaller in recent studies that had been carried out since the previous meta‐analyses of these relationships 15–20 years ago. The small‐to‐moderate intercorrelations are not supportive of a withdrawal construct that includes lateness, absenteeism, and turnover. These intercorrelations also rule out many of the competing models of the relationships between withdrawal behaviors, as many of the models assume all relationships will be positive, null, or negative. On the basis of path analyses using meta‐analytic data, the progression of withdrawal model garnered the most support. This suggests that lateness may moderately predict absenteeism and absenteeism may moderately predict turnover. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
What the literature says about it
Attributed, open-access quotes from other works that cite this article, plus the citation-graph verdict tally. Corroborations and disputes, in one place — the honest-broker view.
supports “Work withdrawal behaviors refer to proactive actions employees take to avoid or express dissatisfaction with their work environment, ranging from occasional daydreaming to more severe behaviors like tardiness, absenteeism, and, ultimately, resignation (Berry et al., 2012; Gupta & Jenkins, 1991).”
supports “There is evidence to support that there exists a sequential aspect to the various forms of withdrawal behaviours (Berry et al., 2012), and employee withdrawal is first reflected in lateness which is regarded as a mild form of withdrawal, followed by absenteeism, and, finally, turnover.”
supports “There is evidence to support that there exists a sequential aspect to the various forms of withdrawal behaviours (Berry et al., 2012), and employee withdrawal is first reflected in lateness which is regarded as a mild form of withdrawal, followed by absenteeism, and, finally, turnover.”
supports “More importantly, some meta-analysis studies have re-ported that absenteeism results in reduced organizational performance and high employee turnover [8,9].”
Ancillary research
Neighbouring works in the citation graph around this article.
Assembled from Principia’s registry — bibliographic record, extracted effect sizes, the models they inform, and open-access citing literature.