I-ADAPT While Conserving Resources: Employees’ Response to Workplace Incivility During Uncertain Times

Abstract

Periods of uncertainty challenge employees’ ability to manage stress and make decisions about staying with or leaving the organisation. Framing COVID-19 as an extreme uncertainty rather than a transient health crisis, the study models how frontline employees respond to abusive customers and supervisors. Theoretically grounded in Conservation of Resources (COR) and Individual Adaptability (I-ADAPT) theories, the research analysed 258 quantitative responses from employees working in passenger services at 6 major Pakistani airports using SmartPLS 4.0. Results showed that customer incivility and abusive supervision were significantly associated with employees’ stress (30% and 40%, respectively), leading to higher quitting intentions (46%). However, COVID-related uncertainty amplified stress-related work–life imbalance but weakened the association between job stress and turnover intentions. These findings extend COR theory by demonstrating that resource loss processes do not operate uniformly under extreme uncertainty, revealing a boundary condition to traditional assumptions regarding stress–withdrawal relationships. Integrating I-ADAPT, the study further explains how employees adjust their responses to stress when external uncertainty constrains their turnover choices, offering a dynamic perspective on coping beyond static stress models. Ultimately, these results caution managers not to interpret reduced turnover intentions during crises as evidence of improved well-being, as they may instead reflect constrained choice and adaptive coping.