Blame or Explain: How Explanations help recovering from Public Service Failures

Public service encounters between employees and citizen are daily fare which makes the occurence of service failure rather likely. However, public service failure and their recovery has been widely neglected so far in public... [ view full abstract ]

Public service encounters between employees and citizen are daily fare which makes the occurence of service failure rather likely. However, public service failure and their recovery has been widely neglected so far in public administration research. Drawing from organizational justice and cognitive appraisal theory, the effects of different explanation strategies, excuses and justifications, are tested using representative population data from a survey experiment. Results show that justifications have positive effects on both, positive and negative appraisal, decreasing the frustration of the citizens. However, using both strategies at the same time may negate their effectiveness. Therefore, frontline staf should choose their explanation wisely.