Restoring balance? Status inconsistency, absenteeism, and HRM practices

Abstract

Although it is commonly assumed that perceptions of equity at work have a significant impact on employee absenteeism, our understanding of the equity–absence relationship is limited in that (1) little is known about equity concepts other than procedural and distributive justice; and (2) for the most part, research has overlooked variables likely to mediate and moderate the impact of equity on absenteeism. Drawing from the effort–reward imbalance model (ERI; Siegrist, 1996), our study advances past research by investigating the association between status inconsistency (a situation in which there is a mismatch between, for example, a person's education and his/her income) and absenteeism, and the variables likely to account for this association. Results from a sample of 416 customer-care employees show that stress mediates the relationship between status inconsistency and absenteeism, and that HRM practices attenuate this relationship. Moderated mediation analyses further reveal that HRM practices moderate the indirect effect of status inconsistency on absenteeism via stress.

Keywords:

• Absenteeism
• Effort–reward imbalance
• HRM practices
• Status inconsistency
• Stress

Acknowledgments

Both authors contributed equally, and names appear in alphabetical order. We thank Etti Doveh for her assistance

Notes

  ¹Since the fit indices were just moderate, we also tested the incremental fit of our measurement model by conducting a series of confirmatory factor analyses. We tested and compared five different models: the baseline model with the three proposed factors and four models with fewer factors. The hypothesized three-factor model fitted the data significantly better than the models with fewer factors, Δχ²(8) = 2671.34, p < .01). These results support the discriminant validity of our status detraction, stress and HRM practices measures.

²Complete details are available from the corresponding author on request.