An attendance control policy based on the Katz and Kahn (1966) motivational pattern of legal compliance was implemented in one department of a large manufacturing organization with two comparable departments serving as controls. A pre‐post measure of absenteeism served as the criterion in a 2 × 3 factorial analysis of variance. The factors were the attendance control policy and 3 levels of absence groups (high, average, and low). It was hypothesized that a control policy based on legal compliance would lead to a meaningful reduction in absenteeism among high absence workers who were considered to be chronic absentees by the organization. The results supported the effectiveness of the attendance control policy among chronically absent workers, although the policy did not lead to improvements in attendance among regular attenders. The implications of the study are discussed in the context of organizational efforts to control chronic absenteei