Journal Article

The role of organisational justice, burnout and commitment in the understanding of absenteeism in the Canadian healthcare sector

Chênevert, Denis, Cole, Nina, Jourdain, Genevieve, Banville, Brigitte

2013

Overview

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to integrate Greenberg's perspective on the connection between injustice and stress in order to clarify the role of organisational justice, burnout and organisational commitment in the understanding of absenteeism.Design methodology approach - The study was carried out among 457 workers of a large healthcare establishment in the Canadian public healthcare sector. The model was tested using structural equation methods.Findings - The results reveal that procedural and interactional justices have an indirect effect on exhaustion through distributive injustice. Moreover, it was found that distributive injustice is indirectly linked to short-term absences through exhaustion. By contrast, the relationship between distributive injustice and long-term absence can be explained by two mediating variables, namely, exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints.Research limitations implications - In spite of the non-longitudinal nature of this study, the results suggest that the stress model and the medical model best explain the relationship between organisational injustice and absenteeism, while the withdrawal model via organisational commitment is not associated in this study with absenteeism.Practical implications - Healthcare managers should consider the possibility of better involving employees in the decision-making process in order to increase their perception of procedural and interactional justice, and indirectly reduce exhaustion and absenteeism through a greater perception of distributive justice.Social implications - For the healthcare sector, the need to reduce absenteeism is particularly urgent because of budget restrictions and the shortage of labour around the world.Originality value - This is one of the first studies to provide a complete model that analyses the stress process in terms of how organisational justice affects short- and long-term absences, in a bid to understand the specific process and factors that lead to shorter and longer episodes of absence.

• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited,Emerald
• Subject: Absenteeism / Attitude of Health Personnel / Budget constraint / Burnout / Burnout, Professional - etiology / Burnout, Professional - psychology / Canada / Complaints / Decision Making / Distributive justice / Fatigue / Fehlzeit / Gesundheitsberufe / Health care / Health care industry / Health Care Sector - organization & administration / Health Care Sector - standards / Health services / Humans / Hypotheses / Injustice / Kanada / Long term / Medical model / Medical personnel / Mitarbeiterbindung / Models, Organizational / Nurses / Nursing care / Organizational commitment / Organizational Culture / Perceptions / Personnel Management - methods / Personnel Management - standards / Procedural justice / Psychosomatic symptoms / Public Sector - organization & administration / Public Sector - standards / Social justice / Social Justice - psychology / Social Justice - standards / Social Support / Stress / Studies / Verhalten in Organisationen