ABSTRACT
Errors have been defined as unintended deviation from plans, goals or adequate feedback processing as well as incorrect action that results from lack of knowledge. Errors can occur at any level and department in a hospitality organization: external errors involving customers – front-of-house or back-of-house – and internal errors involving employees, managers and departments. This chapter reviews the literature on service recovery performance and proposes organizational error management culture as an important predictor of employee service recovery performance. It also proposes mediators to explain the underlying mechanism linking error management culture and service recovery performance. The chapter provides a theoretical model of service recovery performance, including predictors and mediators that have been empirically tested in prior studies. This theoretical framework will help hospitality scholars to build on this line of research. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations to managers on how error management cultures can be developed in hospitality organizations to improve service recovery performance.
