Unequal Attendance: The Relationships Between Race, Organizational Diversity Cues, and Absenteeism

There are a number of ways to estimate the financial impact of absenteeism on organizations. For instance, some analysts use the employees' daily wages whereas others also include the costs of replacement workers and lost revenue. No matter what the method of estimation, there is no denying absenteeism is costly. In fact, conservative estimates place the cost around $200 dollars per employee per missed day (Anderson, 2005). More liberal estimates suggest costs may be closer to $700 dollars per employee per missed day and that the resulting annual losses for some employers exceed $1 million dollars (Armes, 2005). Accordingly, minimizing avoidable absence is a key concern among organizational administrators.

Despite a rich history of research examining absenteeism, it appears this trend has slowed of late. A recent review of topical coverage in scholastic human resource management (HRM) journals from 1994 to 2001 concluded that absenteeism articles were "quite scarce, despite the fact that Harrison and Martocchio (1998) have deemed absenteeism a 'vigorous area of scholarship'" (Hoobler & Johnson, 2004, p. 671). The existing literature on absenteeism has provided a wealth of knowledge regarding its causes and consequences, but the recent paucity of research has left some pressing questions regarding the topic unanswered.

One such question pertains to the origin of racial differences in absenteeism. For instance, Roth, Huffcutt, and Bobko (2003) conducted a meta-analysis examining racial and ethnic differences in measures of job performance. Among the performance measures they considered was absenteeism, finding evidence of Black-White differences in overall absence estimates (d = .19, k = 11, N = 2,379). Similarly, McKay and McDaniel (2006) observed racial mean differences in overall absenteeism/lost time (d = .09, k = 20, N = 3,779), but their estimate included a combination of absences and tardiness. These studies indicate, after accounting for between-study artifacts such as measurement error, Black employees are more likely to be absent from work than their White counterparts. Unfortunately, the data these authors examined offered little insight regarding this difference beyond merely illustrating its existence. Enhancing our understanding of such differences is of utmost importance if organizations are to capitalize on their investments in workforce diversity and obtain its prospective benefits.

This study attempts to shed some much...

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