An Issue-Oriented Review of the Research on Absenteeism

This paper is a review of the critical issues in understanding absenteeism. Its purpose is to identify those critical problems or issues that must be resolved in order to develop literature that has both theoretical substance and practical implications Five sections comprise the paper.. Following an opening discussion of the critical theoretical assumptions that underlie absenteeism, sections two and three focus on methodological issues, The first of these concerns measurement of absenteeism, while the second concerns strategies for analyzing absenteeism, Issues underlying both the measurement and analysis of absenteeism are intimately tied to the theoretical discussion of absenteeism and also have importance f or practice The fourth section examines the consequences of absenteeism; instead of considering absenteeism a dependent variable to be explained, we consider how absenteeism affects other behaviors such as productivity, accidents, and so on The review concludes with a section on issues in managing absenteeism, with particular attention given to examples drawn from the coal industry