Findings of a study that formulated and tested new ways of thinking about teacher absence are presented in this paper, which is based on the premise that teacher absenteeism is a social invention that must be studied within the context of the work site and understood as a function of the social exchange that occurs therein. Prior research has used either the individual or the organization as the primary unit of analysis. This paper suggests that a complementarity exists between these perspectives, indicating a need to better understand how workplace norms are established through social interaction in individual schools. Teacher attendance data for 1989-1990 through 1991-92 were collected from four elementary schools in a western New York school district. Eleven individual/organizational variables were regressed on the frequency of short-term absence. No significant relationships were found. When schools were rank-ordered by attendance, a consistent pattern emerged that suggests the existence of a workplace attendance norm, or "absence culture," that may negate the effects of individual variables. To explore this further, telephone interviews were conducted with teachers from each of the four schools to identify ways in which schools' absence cultures differ. A questionnaire has been developed based on the phone interviews to measure cultural components of teacher absenteeism. (Contains 134 references.) (LMI)