Exploring the Role of Service Recovery Strategies and Causal Attributions on Perceived Justice

Abstract

Research on service recovery has gained increased attention in the past two decades. Recently, researchers have suggested a comprehensive research framework for service recovery. A majority of empirical research is centered on experimental studies. However, there is dearth of field studies measuring the effect of recovery strategies and perceived justice dimensions on service recovery satisfaction.

This study endeavoured to explore the relationship between the recovery strategies, causality attributions and justice dimensions. A comprehensive framework of service recovery including service recovery strategies, causal attributions and justice dimensions is being proposed in this study. The model is extended to include recovery satisfaction and behavioural outcomes to understand the mediating role of justice dimensions between recovery strategies and recovery satisfaction.

A self-administered, cross-sectional survey design was employed to evaluate the impact of the recovery strategies on justice dimensions for the moderating effect of causal attributions such as responsibility, stability and controllability. Respondents were asked to recall any incident occurred during the past six months for which they have complained to a service provider. Responses were measured on predefined seven point likert scale. The structured questionnaire was used to derive responses for causality of service failures, the recovery strategies taken by the service provider, evaluation of the recovery strategies on three dimensions of justice and finally, measuring the behavioural outcomes.

The findings depicted a positive relationship between recovery strategies and justice dimensions, between justice dimensions and service recovery satisfaction and between service recovery satisfaction and behavioural outcomes. The results of the moderation analysis indicated significant and positive relationships between recovery strategies and justice dimensions when the failure is ascribed to a controllable cause or when the service provider is found responsible for the failure. The relationships between recovery strategies and justice dimensions were not found stronger when the failure was attributed to a stable cause. The results underlined the importance of well defined company procedures, system and employee efforts during stable service failures. The findings contribute to the conceptual understanding of mediating role of perceived justice in a service recovery framework.