Date of Conferral

2016

Degree

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)

School

Business Administration

Advisor

Gergana Velkova

Abstract

Absenteeism has a negative impact on organizational output in the form of lost productivity and profit reduction for software engineering companies. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to explore the strategies that software engineering managers utilize for reducing absenteeism. The theory of planned behavior formed the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews from a purposeful sample of 11 managers at an international custom software engineering company. Data collection also included organizational data on employee absences for the past 5 years (2011-2015), e-mail memos, newsletters, employee handbook, and employee performance reviews. Based on methodological triangulation of the data sources and inductive analysis of the data, 4 themes emerged. Emergent themes from the analysis revealed that communication was key to reducing absenteeism, flexible work hours and working from home reduced absence, comradery and employee support positively impacted absenteeism, and that there was a lack of a clear and formal processes for addressing employee absenteeism. These findings suggest that, at this company, an absenteeism reduction strategy could help reduce employee absenteeism to lessen the negative impact on organizational productivity and profitability. These findings may contribute to social change by providing a template for effective absenteeism reduction strategies that managers can use to promote a decreased incidence of absenteeism, organizational profitability, reduction of the unemployment rate, employee stress, and mental health problems.

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