Resilience to Workplace Incivility: How Different Recovery Experiences Influence Resilience Dimensions

Abstract Workplace incivility is a common experience with detrimental individual and organizational outcomes. Personal resources such as recovery experiences can help individuals demonstrate resilience to such adversity. Yet, it remains unknown whether different approaches to daily work recovery contribute to different resilience outcome dimensions. The current study investigated whether psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control recovery experiences were differentially associated with resilience. We assessed resilience across the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment using a residual approach. Participants were 289 local government professionals who completed self-report measures of recovery experiences, workplace incivility, and burnout. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed distinct patterns of associations. For emotional exhaustion resilience, psychological detachment and relaxation recovery opportunities were significant predictors. In contrast, none of the recovery experiences were associated with depersonalization resilience. For personal accomplishment resilience, only the mastery recovery opportunities emerged as a significant predictor. For comparison, psychological detachment and mastery experiences predicted higher scores on a conventional unidimensional trait resilience measure. These findings underscore the value of conceptualizing resilience as a multidimensional construct, as different recovery experiences appear to contribute to resilience in specific outcome domains. The results suggest that tailoring resilience-building strategies to target the unique needs and challenges faced by employees exposed to workplace incivility may be more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach. Continued research is needed to further elucidate the complex interplay between personal resources, workplace demands, and multifaceted resilient functioning.