Empowerment in service recovery: the role of self-regulation process of frontline employee

Abstract

Purpose In accordance with the commitment–trust theory, employee attitudes and behaviours mediate the impact of empowerment on service recovery performance. The purpose of this paper is to extend the self-regulating process model and develop a structural framework that combines empowerment, self-regulation mechanisms (service recovery awareness, job engagement and emotional exhaustion) and post-recovery satisfaction. This framework explores how empowerment can lead to action of frontline employees (FLEs) in service recovery. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the hypotheses by investigating 290 pairs of FLEs and customers, who have service failure experience in the express mail industry, using structure equation modelling. Findings The findings show that empowerment enhances both service recovery awareness and job engagement. On the one hand, service recovery awareness has a positive impact on emotional exhaustion, which has a negative impact on post-recovery satisfaction. On the other hand, job engagement has a positive impact on performance. These results provide the whole picture of the double-edged effects of empowerment on FLEs in service recovery. Practical implications This paper indicates that managers should re-consider approaches to empowerment based on self-regulation process to enhance performance following service failure. Originality/value This study explores the dark side of empowerment in service recovery from a self-regulation perspective.

<p>The Bright Side of Stressed Frontline Employees in Service Recovery: The Combination Causes of Organizational Empowerment and Self-Regulation Processes</p>

“…Specifically, we developed four items for organisational empowerment, based on previous research, that reflected customer orientation, the priority of addressing service failure, the priority of information sharing related to service recovery and reward and recognition from organisation based on efforts in service recovery 16,24,36,48. Second, we used six items to measure SRA,17,27,37 including the items reflect the understanding of the impact of service failure event, the willingness to coordinate with others in service recovery; five items to measure work engagement,36,49 including the self-confidence about the ability to handle service failure; and four items to measure emotional exhaustion,5,34,37 including emotional pressure under service recovery condition. Third, we described SRP as customer satisfaction and customer relationship after service failure handling.…”

“…First, when service failure occurs, FLEs’ appraisals vary between past (e.g., service recovery experiences), present (e.g., service failure attribution) and future outcomes (e.g., rewards and recognition from organisations),26 which are the appraisal processes in the self-regulation model. We summarized these evaluations into the concept of service recovery awareness (SRA) in this study, which refers to fully understanding the importance and timeliness of service failure handling and the ability to decide a probable approach to deal with customer complaints 27. FLEs who have strong SRA may display the willingness to engage in service recovery and show their positive emotions to complaining customers.…”

“…Moreover, there is theoretical consensus to suggest that empowerment leads to FLEs’ work engagement, which enhances SRP 36,45,46. However, some scholars have argued that empowerment would also lead FLEs’ emotional exhaustion, caused by the realization of they should take responsibility and then exhaust their energy on coping with complaining customers 27…”

A Comprehensive Research on Empowerment and Service Recovery Performance at Five-Star Hotels in Jordan

“…In this way, frontline employees should do their work proactively in conducting solutions for any type of service failure, as they trust their organizations supporting them in the process of conducting service recovery (Zhang and Geng, 2019). When organizations focus on implementing structural empowerment and psychological empowerment effectively, the authority and responsibility to deliver excellent services support employees to emphasis more on solving customer"s problems in different service failure incidents (Kim and Oh, 2012).…”

“…When organizations focus on implementing structural empowerment and psychological empowerment effectively, the authority and responsibility to deliver excellent services support employees to emphasis more on solving customer"s problems in different service failure incidents (Kim and Oh, 2012). Therefore, empowerment has clearly an important role to implement service recovery and that is through identifying and solving the problem of different incidents in the service encounter (Hart et al, 1990), it is also the way that help employees to correct customer problems and diminish losses from customer problems as well as enhance the efficiency of recovery implementation, thus promoting customer satisfaction (Zhang and Geng, 2019).…”