Construction workers' perceptions and attitudes toward social norms as predictors of their absence behavior

AbstractBecause 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 behavi...