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Drawing upon the feedback intervention theory, this study aims to focus on the concept of negative feedback change (increase or decrease) to analyze the dynamics of performance feedback and its relationships with goal orientation, feedback utility and task performance.

The authors conducted a two-wave survey by tracking 195 employees and their supervisors from two representative semiconductor-related equipment companies in China for one month.

Results showed that learning goal orientation positively moderates, and performance-approach goal orientation negatively moderates the indirect relationship between negative feedback change and employees’ task performance through employees’ perceptions of feedback utility.

This study provides new directions for performance feedback research by treating negative feedback from a dynamic perspective and addressing the mediating and moderating mechanisms. Furthermore, the findings also remind managers to not only consider feedback actions at a single moment but also manage it as a series of actions in the ongoing stream of time.

Delivering negative feedback to employees is highly problematic for managers. Negative feedback is important in generating improvements in employee performance, but likely to generate adverse employee reactions. However, if managers do not address poor performance, good performers may become demoralized or exit the organization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how managers communicate negative feedback and the factors that drive their choice of tactic.

The authors use interview data from practicing line managers with experience in delivering negative feedback to learn whether their tactic choices are consistent with Implicit (“best practice”) or Contingency (“best fit”) theory.

The authors identify five negative feedback tactics: evidence, emotive and communication tactics are foundation tactics while evidence + communication and evidence + emotive tactics are bundles of the foundation tactics. Managers apply a “best fit” approach from a set of “best practice” negative feedback options. The choice of negative feedback tactic is driven by the manager’s assessment of the “best fit” with the employee’s personality.

Most of the managers believed that their negative feedback tactic had been effective. Future researchers should investigate which negative feedback tactics employees regard as most effective.

A best fit approach to the delivery of negative feedback requires organizations to give managers discretion in the delivery of negative feedback. Managers may mis-assess fit which can undermine the effectiveness of the appraisal process.

The authors focus on how negative feedback is communicated by managers. Existing research focusses on reactions to negative feedback without taking into account how it is delivered.

All organisms carry their hereditary and evolutionary properties in the genetic code of their genotype. Changes arise in this genotype in unlimited variety and every change has effects at four levels: (i) the properties of the whole organism; (ii) its reactions with its environment; (iii) the differential or competitive survival of the organism in present or future environments; and (iv) by feedback, the survival of any other changes that may occur in the genotype. These are the principles of natural selection but they can operate efficiently only with regular means of propagation of the genotype. The necessary means have been provided during the last 1200 m. years by the chromosomes in two ways: (i) by mitosis giving the maximum certainty of propagation within each organism; (ii) by meiosis giving a controlled uncertainty of propagation through recombination of differences in the sexual reproduction of organisms. This recombination makes it possible for all changes which are not disfavoured to feedback through selection so as to favour other changes. If these arise or take effect at the same site they result in the well‐known evolutionary trends which are recognised either in the chromosomes or in the whole organism. In human evolution such trends seem to have arisen in the structure and behaviour of the organism as a result of genetic feedback from an increasing, and acceleratingly increasing, ability of man both to create and to destroy his environment.

Online reviews are perceived as credible and trustworthy across various business sectors; thus, they influence customers’ purchase decisions. However, the potential role of customer online reviews as feedback for employee performance and employee reactions to customer reviews remain largely unclear. To address this knowledge gap, this study proposes that employee characteristics, namely, self-efficacy (Study 1) and moral identity (Study 2), moderate the effect of the valence of customer reviews on hospitality employees’ helping behavior.

The authors used a scenario-based, quasi-experimental design in two studies. They recruited a total of 215 frontline employees at independent casual dining restaurants in Istanbul, Turkey (Study 1) and 226 US residents who have worked in the restaurant industry for more than six months (Study 2). Multiple linear regressions via PROCESS and moderation analysis via Johnson–Neyman technique were used.

Study 1 demonstrates that when employees’ self-efficacy is low, positive (vs negative) customer reviews enhance employees’ helping behavior. By contrast, when employees’ self-efficacy is high, their helping behavior is invariantly high regardless of the valence of customer reviews. Study 2 reveals that when employees’ moral identity is low, their helping behavior decreases in the presence of negative (vs positive) customer reviews. Conversely, when employees’ moral identity is high, their helping behavior is similarly high regardless of the valence of customer reviews.

Hospitality managers may need to develop training programs to enhance their employees’ self-efficacy and moral identity. They may also provide necessary organizational support to induce their employees’ self-efficacy and moral identity, given that such psychological resources help buffer the dampening effect of negative reviews on helping behavior. Last, hospitality managers may consider incorporating customer reviews as part of employee performance feedback.

This study advances the understanding of employees’ responses to customer reviews, with the performance appraisal feedback framework as fresh theoretical lens. This study is among the first to demonstrate the relationship between the valence of customer reviews and subsequent helping behavior of employees toward customers. It also contributes to the emerging literature that identifies boundary conditions for employees’ responses to customer reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how status-based labels, based on future capabilities, can impact people's risk tolerance in decision making.

In this paper the authors developed and tested theoretical arguments using a set of three studies employing a scenario-based approach and a total of 449 undergraduate business students.

The findings suggest that labeling people in terms of future capabilities can trigger perceptions of public scrutiny and influence their risk preferences. Specifically, the results reveal that individuals who are recipients of high-status labels tend to choose lower risk decision options compared to their peers.

The study employed scenarios to examine the issue of employee labeling. The extent to which these scenarios have truly captured the dynamics of labeling is questionable, and future research should employ a field-based study to examine whether the reported effect can be observed in a “real” work context.

Organizations are concerned about their future leadership capacity and often attempt to grow leadership talent by identifying high-potential employees early on. The results of this study suggest that such practice may have an unintentional negative effect of reducing high-potentials’ tolerance toward risky decision making, thus potentially impacting these future leaders’ decision making in the realm of corporate strategy, R&D, etc.

The issue of how labeling individuals in terms of future capabilities can impact their risk preference has been largely ignored by organizational research. This paper suggests that the popular practice of identifying high-potential employees may have unintentional negative effects by lowering their risk tolerance.

To analyze more deeply and in a systemic perspective food system outcomes, and the contribution that small farming can give to the achievement of those outcomes, a detailed analysis of food systems is required, which highlights its components, activities and dynamics. Thus, this chapter deepens the analysis of the food system. We first reflect on the complexity of the concept of food system, discussing the abundance of different conceptualizations proposed in the scientific and political debate on the base of different disciplines and perspectives. Then, a comprehensive representation is shown, which is then unpacked. The food system actors, assets and functions are explored, with an eye on power relations among actors and on the main drivers of change. Governance (that also includes actors external to the food systems) is called ‘reflexive’, as long as it characterizes a system that is able to reflect upon the conditions and the forms of its own functioning, to detect and analyze threats and to change accordingly, with the involvement of actors external to the food systems. This analysis, which represents the focus of this section, provides the base for the description of the food system vulnerability developed in Chapter 4. Drivers of change and governance emerge as key categories to consider.

This paper describes the interrelated nature of explanation, prediction and problem‐solving in social systems. Cybernetic analysis of social phenomena provides a unifying framework in this context. The analytic framework is briefly considered with reference to the problem of ethnic tensions in national societies. The first part of the paper discusses the conceptual apparatus of analysis and develops an integrated multi‐feedback loop model of the complex social phenomenon of ethnic tensions.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of the external environment on the choice of strategic management activities, from a chaos and complexity perspective, since a business environment is a complex adaptive system.

The study in this paper was of an exploratory nature, using the qualitative techniques of case study, depth interviews and document analysis to collect data from two companies each in the IT and packaging industries, namely, more successful/less successful companies.

The paper finds that first, it was proposed that more successful companies in turbulent environments would use radical, fast and disruptive strategies. Furthermore, strategy making should be a democratic, bottom‐up process and should be organic, self‐organising, adaptive and emergent. The results confirmed these propositions. Second, it was proposed that more successful companies in stable environments would use more traditional management and strategies and more formal strategy planning activities. The findings did not confirm this proposition, probably due to the fact that in reality a truly stable environment does not exist in South Africa.

This paper is of benefit to managers and strategists by emphasising a new way to consider the future management and strategies of their companies. Since businesses and markets are complex adaptive systems, using complexity theory to increase understanding of how to cope in complex and turbulent environments is necessary, but has not been widely researched.

This paper seeks to examine learning groups as complex systems and to address three issues about learning in organizations: learning from change; factors affecting learning; and learning leading to growth and renewal.

A case study was conducted at a Singapore Engineering firm to explore its two‐year change intervention experiences. Data were gathered at two stages: laddering, non‐directive interviewing with 45 employees; and focus group discussions with 20 leaders.

Learning from a state of not‐knowing gives rise to a new problem‐solving dimension, enabling individuals to thrive and survive in complexity. Understanding constraints that seemingly truncate change is ironically a generative device that frees people from being trapped by Murphy's Law.

Change provides the stimulus for learning in complex contexts and paradigms where reciprocal relationships are sought to stabilize feedback loops and revitalize decision making. Mediating the variety of learning dynamics is an integration of two metacommunicative activities: dialogue and reflection.

Leaders are the connecting tissues to facilitating a learning that is highly interpretive and socially constructed. Process leadership is characterized by leaders assuming appropriate stewardship and walking the talk. A shared vision is necessary for contextualizing change and stabilizing learning conditions.

Combining Murphy's Law with the complexity of organizational dynamics gives rise to a new understanding of learning in unpredictable contexts. It is a learning that creates a projection of language which transcends time and space, a learning that presents itself as an intertwined activity celebrated by complex systems and processes.

Discusses the requirements for building and implementing a quality measurement system. Contends it is essential that management understands the benefits of both measurement in general and quality measures in detail. Asserts that quality measures focus efforts providing positive and negative feedback. Contends that quality measures immediately point to the area of the process where the problem originates. Asserts that organizational quality measures provide information about how a particular organization is operating. Discusses a number of measurement models. Concludes that reviewing quality measures in a methodological manner will provide increasing opportunities for improvement.