Temporal withdrawal behaviors in an educational policy context

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differential relations between two teacher withdrawal behaviors: work absence and lateness, and two types of school ethics: organizational justice (distributive, procedural) and ethical climate (formal, caring), all in the context of school turbulent environment. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 1,016 teachers in 35 Israeli high schools. The GLIMMIX procedure was used to consider simultaneously the hierarchical structure of the data, as well as the two dependent variables (absence and lateness). Findings: The results showed that lateness was negatively related to two relatively short-term aspects of school ethics: distributive justice, in particular for women, and formal ethical climate. Absence was negatively related to a relatively long-term aspect of school ethics: caring climate, in particular for low- to medium-level seniority teachers. Research limitations/implications: The paper’s theoretical contribution is to explicate the unique relation of each temporal withdrawal behavior to specific dimensions of the school ethical constructs studied. Practical implications: In order to reduce teachers’ temporal withdrawal behaviors, school management may need to attenuate policy that taps into organizational ethics, while considering the effects of school culture and turbulent environment. Originality/value: This study offers a time perspective, which fine-tunes understanding of teachers’ lateness and absence behaviors, while pointing out the unique relations of lateness and absence to school ethical within educational policy context.