Although the protective roles of spirituality and psychological resilience against burnout are well documented, existing research largely treats these resources as parallel predictors. Challenging this assumption, the present study proposes and tests a hierarchical resource model in which psychological resilience serves as the hypothesized conduit through which employee spirituality mitigates emotional exhaustion.
Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 223 millennial “sandwich generation” employees in Indonesia. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapped mediation analysis (PROCESS v4.2) were employed, supplemented by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and dominance analysis to strengthen the empirical rigor.
The results are consistent with an indirect-only mediation pattern, also known as full mediation. Crucially, the direct effect of spirituality on exhaustion was non-significant when resilience was included in the model, consistent with the proposed hierarchical ordering. Furthermore, resilience demonstrated a significantly stronger protective effect than spirituality.
This study moves beyond descriptive theory integration to propose a directional ordering of resources, specifying a hierarchy in which value-based resources (spirituality) systematically build capacity-based resources (resilience). By positioning resilience not just as a correlate but as a hypothesized essential conduit for spirituality's benefits, we offer an initial step toward a more parsimonious explanatory model. This framework provides a sharper lens for understanding burnout prevention, particularly within the high-stress context of the millennial sandwich generation in Indonesia, while recognizing that further research is needed to establish generalizability.
