DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF ATTENDANCE BEHAVIOR WITHIN CONSTRUCTION CREWS

Although individual-level factors (e.g., attitudes, personality) have long been associated with day-to-day attendance decisions, increasingly researchers have recognized "the social nature of attendance dynamics and their susceptibility to social control (Johns, 2008)." Implications of this social approach for research would be to focus attention on the causes and effects of absence culture (i.e., absence-related perceptions, beliefs, values), and the effects of absence culture on individual and group attendance within social units. Construction projects typically require workers to work in teams or crews on highly interdependent projects, and, thus, are particularly relevant contexts to study absence culture. In this paper we apply a system dynamics (SD) model to study absence culture by utilizing the advantages of SD in capturing a feedback process and state changes. We were particularly interested in: (a) the awareness of social norms within construction crews that pertained to attendance, (b) the interplay between formal attendance rules (policy) and these social norms, and (c) how these sources of influence affected the decision-making process of construction crew members. We expect that the results of this work will help construction organizations evaluate (or re-consider) the effects of their attendance control policies (e.g., timing, strength, and frequency) within a social context. Moreover, our findings suggest that the key to reducing excessive absences might be to invest time in influencing absence culture directly rather than imposing frequent and strict regulations - which, in turn, may inadvertently fortify a culture that works against the organization's interests.