Interactional justice at work is related to sickness absence: a study using repeated measures in the Swedish working population

Leineweber, Constanze, Bernhard-Oettel, Claudia, Paraskevi, Peristera, Eib, Constanze, Nyberg, Anna and Westerlund, Hugo (2017) Interactional justice at work is related to sickness absence: a study using repeated measures in the Swedish working population. BMC Public Health, 17. ISSN 1471-2458

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Abstract

Background: Research has shown that perceived unfairness contributes to higher rates of sickness absence. While shorter, but more frequent periods of sickness absence might be a possibility for the individual to get relief from high strain, long-term sickness absence might be a sign of more serious health problems. The Uncertainty Management Model suggests that justice is particularly important in times of uncertainty, e.g. perceived job insecurity. The present study investigated the association between interpersonal and informational justice at work with long and frequent sickness absence respectively, under conditions of job insecurity. Methods: Data were derived from the 2010, 2012, and 2014 biennial waves of the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH). The final analytic sample consisted of 19,493 individuals. We applied repeated measures regression analyses through generalized estimating equations (GEE), a method for longitudinal data that simultaneously analyses variables at different time points. We calculated risk of long and frequent sickness absence, respectively in relation to interpersonal and informational justice taking perceptions of job insecurity into account. Results: We found informational and interpersonal justice to be associated with risk of long and frequent sickness absence independently of job insecurity and demographic variables. Results from autoregressive GEE provided some support for a causal relationship between justice perceptions and sickness absence. Contrary to expectations, we found no interaction between justice and job insecurity. Conclusions: Our results underline the need for fair and just treatment of employees irrespective of perceived job insecurity in order to keep the workforce healthy and to minimize lost work days due to sickness absence.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Availability of data and materials: The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due legal restrictions but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Funding information: This work funded by grants of the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Science (grant no. P13-0905:1) and partly funded by the Stockholm Stress Center, a FORTE Centre of Excellence (FORTE, grant no. 2009-1758). The SLOSH study was supported by the Swedish Council or Working life (FAS, grant #2005-0734) and the Swedish Research Council (VR, grant no. 2009-6192 and 2013-1645). The funders had no role in the research process and were not involved in the writing of the article.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	22 Nov 2017 06:05
Last Modified:	25 Sep 2024 13:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65531
DOI:	10.1186/s12889-017-4899-y

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