Experience of shame in service failure context among restaurant frontline employees: does industry tenure matter?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to integrate tenets from the appraisal-based model of self-conscious emotions and the compass of shame theory to examine restaurant frontline employees’ experience of shame following service failures, and how shame influences employees’ job attitude and behaviors. In addition, employees’ industry tenure is identified as an individual factor influencing the impacts of shame in resorting to literature on aging in emotion regulation. Design/methodology/approach Using a survey methodology, 217 restaurant frontline employees and their supervisors in Turkey provided survey data. Partial least squares (PLS) method using SmartPLS 3.3.3 was used for data analysis. Findings The results indicated the maladaptive nature of shame following service failures as a salient self-conscious emotion, as it was negatively related to employee outcomes. Moreover, employees’ industry tenure played a moderating role that influences the impacts of shame on commitment to customer service. Practical implications Managers should attend to frontline employees’ shame experience depending on their industry experience and adopt appropriate emotion intervention (e.g. cognitive reappraisal) or create error management culture to eliminate the negative effects of shame. Originality/value This study advances our understanding of a powerful but understudied emotional experience, shame, in a typical shame-eliciting hospitality work setting (e.g. service failures). Shame has been linked with commitment to customer service and error reporting. In addition, industry tenure has been identified as a boundary condition to help clarify previous inconsistent findings in regard to the adaptive/maladaptive nature of shame.

The effect of service failure severity on brand forgiveness: the moderating role of interpersonal attachment styles and thinking styles

“…As a highly experience-oriented industry, customers’ experiences with hotel brands are a critical factor in customer–brand relationship building (Guan et al , 2021). Nonetheless, service delivery in the hotel industry frequently fails because of coproduction (Wang et al , 2021) and human involvement issues (Kim and Jang, 2022). Such issues not only lead to increased customer mistreatment (i.e.…”

“…As a highly experience-oriented industry, customers' experiences with hotel brands are a critical factor in customer-brand relationship building (Guan et al, 2021). Nonetheless, service delivery in the hotel industry frequently fails due to coproduction (Wang et al, 2021) and human involvement issues (Kim & Jang, 2022). Such issues not only lead to increased customer mistreatment (i.e., low-quality treatment of customers; Huang & Kwok, 2021), but can also have a severe effect on customer experiences and eventually damage brand reputations (Akarsu et al, 2022).…”

“…Service failures have always been endemic to the hotel industry (Akarsu et al, 2022), partly due to the frequent customer-employee interaction hospitality involves (Koc, 2019), which makes service failures inevitable and unavoidable (Wang et al, 2021), leading to tangible losses (e.g., declining revenues) and severe damage to hotels' intangible assets (e.g., reputation; Akarsu et al, 2022). Prior research has shown that service failure severity, which reflects the perceived significance of the failure and its triggered aggravation, is a critical factor in customers' perceptions of service failure (El-Manstrly et al, 2021).…”

“…Service failures have always been endemic to the hotel industry (Akarsu et al , 2022), partly because of the frequent customer–employee interaction hospitality involves (Koc, 2019), which makes service failures inevitable and unavoidable (Wang et al , 2021), leading to tangible losses (e.g. declining revenues) and severe damage to hotels’ intangible assets (e.g.…”

Service failure research in the hospitality and tourism industry: a synopsis of past, present and future dynamics from 2001 to 2020

“…At the time-of-service failure, the direct causal relationship between the incident and cognitive and behavioural outcomes of customers has been investigated frequently (Wang et al, 2021). Through the attribution theory, customers tend to explain the cause of events and try to create a cause-and-effect relationship based on three causal layersstability, controllability, and locus of control (Weiner, 2000).…”