Feedback-Seeking Behavior as a Self-Regulation Strategy for Creative Performance

Using a sample of 456 supervisor-employee dyads from 4 organizations, this study examined how employees use feedback seeking as a self-regulation strategy to manage their creative performance. As hypothesized, employees’ cognitive style and perceived organizational support for creativity affected two patterns of their feedback seeking, i.e. their tendency to inquire for feedback from various sources and their propensity to monitor their environment for indirect feedback cues. Feedback inquiry from various sources further related to supervisor ratings of employee creative performance. These results highlight the importance of studying employees’ self-regulatory behaviors in the creative process and support the proposition that feedback seeking is not only a strategy that facilitates individual adaptation, but also an individual resource that can help individuals to achieve creative outcomes.SELF-REGULATION, FEEDBACK-SEEKING BEHAVIOR, EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY, COGNITIVE STYLE, PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT FOR CREATIVITY

How is Feedback-Seeking Behavior Interpreted? The Influence of Feedback-Seeking Pattern and Feedback Source’s Characteristics on Impression Formation and Performance Evaluations

This study examined how feedback seekers’ and targets’ characteristics affect how feedback-seeking acts are evaluated. We studied how two aspects of the pattern of feedback seeking, the sign of the feedback sought (positive versus negative) and the frequency of seeking (frequent versus infrequent) interact with the performance history of the feedback seeker to affect impressions formed by feedback targets. In addition, we assessed how the target characteristic of implicit person theory affects feedback-seeking attributions and how this relationship is shaped by the pattern of seeking. Results indicate that the pattern of feedback seeking is a relevant moderator of the effects of the seeker’s performance history and targets’ implicit person theories on targets’ impressions of feedback seeking. In addition, the results show that targets’ attributions for feedback seeking are one of the underlying mechanisms explaining why feedback-seeking behavior affects important organizational outcomes.FEEDBACK-SEEKING BEHAVIOR, IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT, IMPLICIT PERSON THEORY, ATTRIBUTIONS

How Are We Doing After 30 Years? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Feedback-Seeking Behavior

This study provides meta-analytic estimates of the antecedents and consequences of feedback-seeking behavior (FSB). Clear support was found for the guiding cost/benefit framework in the feedback-seeking domain. Organizational tenure, job tenure, and age were negatively related to FSB. Learning and performance goal orientation, external feedback propensity, frequent positive feedback, high self-esteem, a transformational leadership style, and a high-quality relationship were positively associated with FSB. Challenging some of the dominant views in the feedback-seeking domain, the relationship between uncertainty and FSB was negative and the relationship between FSB and performance was small. Finally, inquiry and monitoring are not interchangeable feedback-seeking tactics. So FSB is best represented as an aggregate model instead of a latent model. In the discussion, gaps in the current FSB knowledge are identified and a research agenda for the future is put forward. Future research may benefit from (a) a systematic and integrative effort examining antecedents of both feedback-seeking strategies on the basis of a self-motives framework, (b) adopting a process perspective of feedback-seeking interactions, and (c) taking the iterative nature of feedback into account