The way justice unleashes staff’s compassion toward hotel guests

Аннотация

Purpose – This paper aims to model staff reactions to a hotel based on the way they perceive hotel’s treatment of customers. It suggests that employees are not motivated to help abused customers in the form of customer-oriented behaviors (COBs) until employees also feel that they are victims of abuse by the hotel. Hence, effects of staff’s unfavorable justice perceptions for customers on employee COBs are expected to be negative until staff’s unfavorable justice perceptions for themselves, interacting in this relationship, turn it positive. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on social exchange and compassion theories, the argument is made that staff members who are also victims of abuse by the hotel can empathize more with guests, turning quid pro quo responses to abuse of customers into compassionate responses. Findings – Regression results from a field study of 280 employees at ten hotels in the Canary Islands provide general support for our hypotheses.