Public management traditionally is concerned with a rather high level of absenteeism in public sector organizations (Wright and Pandey 2011) and public management research has identified absenteeism as a challenge to organizational health in local governments (Hugh 2001). Hassan and colleagues (2014) point out that despite the importance of the phenomenon of absenteeism in public sector organizations, research on how to reduce absenteeism is scarce. This paper will examine the relationship between workplace social capital and absenteeism in the public sector. Research has shown that workplace social capital is an important antecedent for absenteeism (De Clercq et al., 2015; Kiss et al., 2014; Rugulies et al., 2014). Furthermore, public managers can influence workplace social capital, hence making it a potential lever to directly affect employees’ absenteeism. However many studies in the field suffer from several limitations, for example simplistic conceptualizations and measurements of workplace social capital and persistent lack of evidence on causal mechanisms. These limitations might bias the results and thereby weaken our current knowledge in this area (De Clercq et al., 2015).
In this paper we will address several of the existing gaps in the literature and examine workplace social capital and absenteeism in a large Danish municipality. To avoid common source bias we integrate different datasets on workplace social capital (N = 7848 from 2014) and on causes of sickness absence (N = 2981 from 2016) with registered sickness absences of all employees from 2014-2017. For workplace social capital, we use a well validated measure which systematically measures the different relationships in the organization (bonding, bridging and linking relations) (Borg et al., 2014). We will control for relevant factors such as self-reported health, organizational position, satisfaction with the job, gender, etc. (Kiss et al., 2014; Väänänen et al., 2008). The research design presents a unique opportunity to examine how workplace social capital impact on sickness absenteeism over time. Thereby we are able to provide reliable evidence on causal mechanisms.
Our preliminary results show that the impact of workplace social capital differs depending on which relation (bonding, bridging and linking) is considered, and that some of these links are moderated by organizational and sickness-related circumstances. We will discuss these results further and provide suggestions on how managers may use workplace social capital to reduce absenteeism in the public sector in the future. Thereby the paper will contribute with new and highly needed knowledge to enable public managers to reduce absenteeism.
IRSPM_18_paper_final_06.04.18_.pdf 