The way justice unleashes staff’s compassion toward hotel guests

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. Practical implications By understanding when and why (un)fair treatment of guests and staff has consequences for the hotel in the form of COBs, hotel managers can favor a better staff response to hotels’ careful stewardship of the service encounter in terms of COBs. The reversal of the direction in the relationship suggests the unfolding of compassion within a justice framework, which challenges the long-lived perceived incompatibility between compassion and justice in the organizational literature. Originality/value The present study is the first one to study COBs stemming either from staff responses to hotels’ abuse of customers or COBs resulting from the interaction between perceived justice for customers and justice perceptions for themselves.