Anxiety and gratitude toward the organization: Relationships with error management culture and service recovery performance. (August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Xingyu; Guchait, Priyanko; Pasamehmetoglu, Aysin
• Is Part Of: International journal of hospitality management. Volume 89(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Subjects: Gratitude -- Error management -- Anxiety -- Emotion -- Service recovery performance; Hotel management -- Periodicals; Restaurant management -- Periodicals; Food service management -- Periodicals; Hôtels -- Gestion -- Périodiques; Restaurants -- Gestion -- Périodiques; Services alimentaires -- Gestion -- Périodiques; Food service management; Hotel management; Restaurant management; Periodicals; 647.94
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102592
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0278-4319

Abstract

Highlights: Identified one organizational factor (error management culture) that had impacts on both hospitality employees' experiences of gratitude and anxiety. Proved that through the error management culture, error situations can become unique opportunities to generate employees' gratitude and mitigate employees' anxiety toward the organization. Employees' gratitude and anxiety toward the organization had significant positive and negative impacts on their service recovery performance, respectively. Established an "organizational culture-employee emotions-work behavior" framework based on the multi-level model of emotions and affective event theory. Abstract: According to affective events theory (AET), organizational contexts can produce "affective events" that shape individuals' emotional experiences, subsequently influencing those individuals' work behaviors. This study hypothesized that every time an error occurs in an error management culture, it is an affective event that can stimulate employees' gratitude and reduce their anxiety toward their respective organizations. Gratitude and anxiety are positively and negatively associated with employees' service recovery performance, respectively. Drawing on three waves of data collected from 218 hotel employees, this study found that error management culture was positively associated with gratitude and negatively associated with anxiety. Consequently, gratitude and anxiety influenced employees' service recovery performance, as rated by the employees' supervisors. These findings suggest that error management culture can influence employees' service recovery performance through the culture's impact on gratitude and anxiety.