Service Recovery: An Integrative Framework and Research Agenda

Abstract

Service recovery captures the organizational actions of seeking and dealing with a failure in service delivery. Although many studies have examined the outcomes of organizational efforts to manage service recovery, there is no comprehensive framework embracing the focal constructs, the causal relationships, the interdisciplinarity, and the levels of theory in service recovery. In this paper we synthesize theoretical and empirical studies examining the operations, marketing, and human resources management views on service recovery, offering three contributions to the literature. First, we develop an interdisciplinary and multilevel framework linking organizational investments in service recovery to organizational, employee, and customer outcomes, within and across levels of theory. Second, we integrate conceptual and empirical propositions from previously separate research. Third, we offer scholars a research agenda highlighting several issues that are in need of interdisciplinary research on service recovery.