Ahn, S; Lee, S and Steel, R P (2014) Construction workers' perceptions and attitudes toward social norms as predictors of their absence behavior. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 140(5): 04013069, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Because construction operations depend on labor activity, absenteeism on a job site can damage project performance in many ways. Traditionally, construction managers have viewed absenteeism as a problem of individuals and have not paid much attention to absenteeism as a group-level phenomenon. As a result, individually focused formal rule enforcement (e.g., issuing a penalty) has been used to reduce absenteeism in construction projects, but this approach often results in the insufficient encouragement of attendance motivation. To better manage workers' attendance on job sites, another aspect in absenteeism that has recently received attention is behavioral control of workers, including how workers perceive formal and social rules for absence, build attitudes toward these rules, and control their absence behavior accordingly. With this background, the objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between workers' perceptions/attitudes toward formal/social rules and their absence behavior by using real-world data. To fulfill this objective, a survey questionnaire was developed, data were collected from three different job sites, and statistical analyses were performed using logistic regression models. The results of the analyses show that construction workers who perceive salient social norms in their team are less likely to be absent from the job site, which implies that worker absence behavior is under the influence of social controls. It is also found that the primary mechanism by which social controls on workers' behavior take place in construction is self-categorization. The results of this research extend the current knowledge of the mechanism and the role of social controls in shaping construction workers' absence behavior. From the results, it is inferred that even a modest investment in promoting social cohesion and creating a positive prototype in teams can be an effective means of maintaining low absenteeism on a job site.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | absence behavior; absenteeism; behavioral control; labor; labor and personnel issues; social cohesion; social norms; worker attitude |
| Index terms: | social cohesion, construction project, questionnaire, construction manager, prototype, social norms, motivation, survey, social control, personnel, absenteeism, penalty, enforcement, construction worker, project performance, encouragement, construction operation, statistical analysis, logistic regression |
| Subjects: | profession, data collection methods, practitioner, psychology, modelling and simulation, construction operations, data science, management, health safety and environment, production management, project management theory and practice, sociology, social justice, regulatory law, statistical analysis |
| Topics: | Site Management, Ethics, Human Resources, Legal Issues, Roles and Professions, Project Management, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here