Error Aversion Versus Error Management: Does Organizational Error Culture Affect Employees’ Customer Orientation?

Abstract

This study examines how two error cultures (error management and error aversion) influence customer-oriented behavior through negative affectivity and job satisfaction. We collected two samples: one for the error-aversive scale validation ( n = 140) and the other for the conceptual model ( n = 381). All responses are from contact employees working for mid-scale to luxury hotels in a metropolitan city in China. The findings reveal that mid-scale hotels are more error-averse than upscale hotels; upscale and luxury hotels are more inclined to error-management than mid-scale hotels. Further, error strains and error cover-up do not converge as lower-order constructs for error aversion; cover-up appears to be the truly opposite of error management. Cover-up along with strains decreases customer-oriented behavior through negative affectivity. In contrast, error management increases customer orientation through job satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature of organizational error culture by incorporating two opposite error cultures into the proposed model.