Teachers' withdrawal behaviors: integrating theory and findings

Purpose ‐ The article aims to investigate the relationships between different dimensions of organizational ethics and different withdrawal symptoms ‐ lateness, absence, and intent to leave work. Design/methodology/approach ‐ Participants were 1,016 school teachers from 35 high schools in Israel. A joint model of Glimmix procedure of SAS was used for this analysis, which simultaneously measures lateness using the negative binomial distribution, absence using the Poisson distribution, and intent to leave using the normal distribution. Findings ‐ Findings indicate that the different dimensions of organizational ethics were related to one another. Formal climate and distributive justice were found to be negatively related to lateness, while a caring climate was found to be negatively related to absence frequency, and procedural justice was found to be negatively related to intent to leave. The results indicate certain differences between ethical predictors, which may arise from extrinsic motivation factors and those that may arise from intrinsic motivation factors. As regards socio-demographic predictors, women teachers exhibit more absence and less intent to leave than men. Teachers with high seniority at their school prefer to respond with absence and a reduced intent to leave, and as the teacher's age rises, the lower are lateness and absence frequency. Practical implications ‐ School leadership should develop an integrative approach which includes ethics and socio-demographic factors in order to reduce teachers' withdrawal behaviors. Such an approach may be achieved through training programs, developing clear rules, incentives and delegation of power. Originality/value ‐ The results offer an integrative framework by simultaneously considering various aspects of ethics, withdrawal behaviors, and socio-demographic predictors.