title: The role of organisational justice, burnout and commitment in the understanding of absenteeism in the Canadian healthcare sector.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this paper is to integrate Greenberg's perspective on the connection between injustice and stress in order to clarify the role of organisational justice, burnout and organisational commitment in the understanding of absenteeism.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was carried out among 457 workers of a large healthcare establishment in the Canadian public healthcare sector. The model was tested using structural equation methods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results reveal that procedural and interactional justices have an indirect effect on exhaustion through distributive injustice. Moreover, it was found that distributive injustice is indirectly linked to short-term absences through exhaustion. By contrast, the relationship between distributive injustice and long-term absence can be explained by two mediating variables, namely, exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In spite of the non-longitudinal nature of this study, the results suggest that the stress model and the medical model best explain the relationship between organisational injustice and absenteeism, while the withdrawal model via organisational commitment is not associated in this study with absenteeism.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Healthcare managers should consider the possibility of better involving employees in the decision-making process in order to increase their perception of procedural and interactional justice, and indirectly reduce exhaustion and absenteeism through a greater perception of distributive justice.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  For the healthcare sector, the need to reduce absenteeism is particularly urgent because of budget restrictions and the shortage of labour around the world.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This is one of the first studies to provide a complete model that analyses the stress process in terms of how organisational justice affects short- and long-term absences, in a bid to understand the specific process and factors that lead to shorter and longer episodes of absence.
authors.affiliation: HEC Montreal- HRM, Montreal, Canada. denis.chenevert@hec.ca
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chênevert
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Jourdain
authors.forename: Nona
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cole
authors.forename: Brigitte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Banville
mesh_terms: D000041:Absenteeism; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002055:Burnout, Professional / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D002170:Canada; D003657:Decision Making; D019981:Health Care Sector / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015279:Organizational Culture; D010559:Personnel Management / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D017150:Public Sector / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards; D012935:Social Justice / Q000523:psychology* / Q000592:standards; D012944:Social Support