Historically, feedback has primarily been studied as an organizational resource, due largely to the performance-improving effects of feedback. Recently, however, researchers have suggested that feedback may also serve as an individual resource for employees. Specifically, it has been suggested that individuals within organizations may actively seek feedback to help them attain their personal goals. Although employee feedback seeking behavior is, to date, a relatively new area of inquiry, research has shown that employees’ feedback seeking behavior is related to such factors as goal value and importance, and negative performance beliefs. Other factors that would seem to be related to individuals’ feedback seeking behavior include the discrepancy of prior feedback, attributes of feedback sources, and characteristics of the performance goal.
The present study was designed to investigate the relation of discrepancy in prior feedback, source attributes, and goal characteristics to managers’ overall feedback seeking behavior and their feedback seeking behavior and reliance on two feedback sources (i.e. their supervisor and their subordinates). It was hypothesized that the discrepancy between managers’ self feedback ratings and ratings given to them by a source (i.e. their supervisor and subordinates) would be positively related to their subsequent feedback seeking behavior. In addition, it was hypothesized that various goal characteristics and source attributes would be positively related to feedback seeking behavior, and would moderate the relationship between discrepancy in prior feedback and feedback seeking behavior.
Subjects were 153 middle level managers in a large governmental agency who had participated in a developmental workshop, during which they received feedback relating to various performance dimensions from their supervisor, subordinates, and self. At the end of the workshop, subjects selected developmental performance goals. A survey questionnaire three months after the workshop was used to assess source attributes, goal characteristics, and feedback seeking behavior in relation to each subject’s most important developmental goal.
Analyses of managers’ responses indicated an overall moderate level of feedback seeking behavior pertaining to their performance on their developmental goal. In addition, feedback seeking from subordinates was just as frequent in feedback seeking from the supervisor. Contrary to expectations, discrepancy between self and others’ feedback ratings was not related to subsequent feedback seeking behavior, and no strong moderators of this relationship were found. As hypothesized, the goal characteristics of importance, commitment, and uncertainty were positively related to overall feedback seeking behavior (across all sources). In addition, the source attributes of subordinate credibility, power, and availability were positively related to managers’ seeking and reliance on their subordinates for feedback, and the attribute of supervisor credibility was related to feedback seeking and reliance on the supervisor. These results and the results from additional analyses were discussed, as were suggestions for future research of feedback seeking behavior
