Incivility and recovery: relationships at the day, the person, and the team level

This thesis explores the relationships between workplace incivility and recovery at the day-, person- and team-level. It was suggested that recovery could represent an underlying mechanism through which incivility affects individuals in the longer term, and that both contextual factors and team-level recovery experience norms might affect this relationship. The results of this thesis supported these assertions, with both variables related at a number of different levels. The first and second studies examined relationships at the day-level, demonstrating that when an individual experiences workplace incivility their after-work recovery process is negatively impacted, with the effects lasting into the next-day. The second study demonstrated that the likelihood of experiencing such uncivil behaviours changes with the day of the week, becoming less likely as an employee moves from Monday to Friday. The final study explored the person- and team-level of analysis, demonstrating that those who experienced more co-worker incivility were less likely, while those who experienced more supervisor incivility were more likely, to engage in after-work relaxation experiences. In contrast, neither form of incivility significantly affected psychological detachment experiences at the between-person level, indicating the relationships between incivility and recovery experiences differ significantly with the level of measurement. At the team-level, psychological detachment operated as a group-norm, with those that worked in a team with a positive psychological detachment norm (i.e. that encouraged psychological detachment) more likely to engage in both relaxation and psychological detachment experiences. Variables that may moderate these relationships were also tested. Strengths and limitations of this thesis are presented, together with implications for practice and future research.