Frontline health professionals’ perceptions of their adaptive competences in service recovery

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is extensive research on service recovery from the customer’s perspective, but not the service professional’s viewpoint. This is surprising, as service professionals are responsible for service recovery that is co-created with the customer in the joint sphere. Thus, this study empirically tested a framework of the antecedents of frontline health professionals’ (FHPs) perceptions of their recovery performance, including cultural and emotional competences that help them to adapt to failures and interact fairly with customers. This framework includes the organisational recovery system that sets the parameters FHPs operate within; the focus of previous research. The context is hospitals in Qatar, which has a sophisticated healthcare system. The hypotheses were generated from a literature review and 10 depth interviews with FHPs, followed by empirical testing with a sample of 343 FHPs. The results suggest that FHPs’ cultural and emotional competences and recovery self-efficacy improve their self-perceived interpersonal fairness and recovery performance. Various human resource management strategies are proposed based on these findings.