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In this chapter, we aim to investigate the emotional and performance consequences of negative feedback in the workplace and provide an explanation for the varying reactions exhibited by employees.

We adopt a theoretical approach to develop propositions that elucidate the impact of negative feedback on task performance, with a specific focus on the mediating role of emotion regulation. By considering individual differences in task versus relational orientation, we aim to shed light on how these differences influence individuals' responses to negative feedback.

We propose that individuals with a task orientation are more inclined to engage in emotion regulation strategies following negative feedback, leading to improvements in subsequent task performance. Conversely, individuals with a relational orientation tend to internalize negative feedback, impeding their ability to regulate negative emotions and, consequently, hindering task performance enhancement.

Our research contributes to the existing literature by examining the emotional and performance consequences of negative feedback in the workplace. By emphasizing the significance of emotion regulation and individual differences, we provide valuable insights that can inform the management of feedback processes within organizations.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize, understand, and measure positive and negative aspects of supervisor developmental feedback (SDF) and investigate their relationships with task performance.

In Study 1, common themes in SDF were identified and a set of SDF items were developed to capture the positive and negative SDF domain. Study 2 entailed the administration of the items to respondents to examine the dimensionality of the items through exploratory factor analysis. In Study 3, using confirmatory factor analysis we further examined the extent to which positive and negative developmental feedback (PSDF and NSDF) were conceptually distinct from each other and different from an existing general measure of supervisor feedback.

Study 1 and Study 2 yielded evidence that positive and negative SDF are distinct yet related constructs. Positive SDF predicted employee task performance. The positive SDF by negative SDF interaction predicted task performance.

The authors provide criterion-related validity evidence by examining the predictive validity of positive and negative SDF on subordinate task performance (reported by supervisors). Future research should examine the role of positive and negative SDF in predicting job performance in other samples and cultural contexts and for other outcomes, including organizational citizenship.

This research refines the SDF domain by identifying positive and negative domains of the SDF construct. The authors propose and test the joint influence of positive and negative SDF. The novel findings point to the importance of supervisors providing both positive and negative feedback to enhance performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate when and why supervisor negative feedback is associated with employees' job performance via two different pathways (i.e. emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping) and to introduce proactive personality as a moderator.

Time-lagged data were collected using a field survey research design. Participants included 389 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors from five companies in China.

Supervisor negative feedback can lead to employees' emotion-focused coping, which in turn impairs their job performance. Meanwhile, supervisor negative feedback can trigger employees’ problem-focused coping, which subsequently promotes their job performance. Furthermore, proactive personality moderates the indirect effect of supervisor negative feedback on employee performance through emotion-focused coping.

This study explored the double-edged effects of supervisor negative feedback on employee job performance from a coping strategy perspective and investigated how proactive personality influences the choice of coping strategies.

How do organizations respond to negative feedback regarding their innovation activities? In this chapter, the authors reconcile contradictory predictions stemming from behavioral learning and from the escalation of commitment (EoC) perspectives regarding persistence under negative performance feedback. The authors core argument suggests that the seemingly contradictory psychological processes indicated by these two perspectives occur simultaneously in decision makers but that the design of organizational roles and reward systems affects their prevalence in decision-making tasks. Specifically, the authors argue that for decision makers responsible for an individual project, responses given to negative performance feedback regarding a project are dominated by self-justification and loss-avoidance mechanisms predicted by the EoC literature, while for decision makers responsible for a portfolio of projects, responses to negative performance regarding a project are dominated by an under-sampling of poorly performing alternatives that behavioral learning theory predicts. In addition to assigning decision-making authority to different organizational roles, organizational designers shape the strength of these mechanisms through the design of reward systems and specifically by setting more or less ambiguous goals, aspiration levels, time horizons of incentives provided, and levels of failure tolerance.

Research on the effects of feedback frequency has reported mixed findings. To tackle this problem, the current study focuses on specific feedback signs (i.e. negative feedback). By integrating the face management theory and attribution theory, this study examined the mediating effect of trust in supervisors and the moderating effect of employee-attributed performance promotion motives for negative feedback.

A field study with 176 participants and two supplemental experiments with 143 and 100 participants, respectively, were conducted to test the theoretical model.

Results revealed that the frequency of supervisory negative feedback negatively influenced employees’ trust in supervisors, which in turn influenced employees’ perceptions of feedback utility and learning performance. These indirect effects can be alleviated when employees have high degrees of performance promotion attribution for supervisor motives.

This research extends feedback research by integrating feedback frequency with a specific sign of feedback and revealing a moderated mediation effect of the negative feedback frequency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of negative performance feedback on firms' cost behaviors including productive behaviors (i.e. R&D behaviors) and non-productive behaviors (i.e. selling behaviors and business entertainment behaviors), as well as to investigate the roles of ownership types and marketization.

A sample of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2018 is analyzed employing multiple regression models.

The results show that negative performance feedback has a positive but not significant effect on R&D behaviors, while its effect on selling behaviors is significantly positive. Meanwhile, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between negative performance feedback and business entertainment behaviors. Furthermore, when facing a performance dilemma, state-owned enterprises tend to adjust selling behaviors, while nonstate-owned enterprises pay more attention to business entertainment behaviors. In terms of marketization, the firms in high-marketization regions are more likely to adjust their R&D, selling and business entertainment behaviors, while the firms in low-marketization regions are difficult to adjust these cost behaviors.

This study explores the role of negative performance feedback in firms' cost behaviors and provides empirical evidence about the differentiated influences regarding ownership types and marketization.

Integrating insights from existing studies and introducing the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory, this study proposes a more inclusive framework that addresses the impacts of negative performance feedback on firms' cost behaviors. This paper deepens the understanding of firms' decision behaviors in the dilemma of performance shortfall.

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.

The rapid, yet low-profit, expansion of the production capacity of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) represents a remarkable phenomenon. However, the motivation behind this key operational decision remains underexplored, especially concerning the prioritization of sociopolitical and financial goals in operations management. Drawing on the multiple-goal model in the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), the authors' study aims to examine how SOE capacity expansion is driven by performance feedback regarding the sociopolitical goal of employment provision and how SOEs differently prioritize sociopolitical and financial goals based on negative versus positive feedback on the sociopolitical goal.

The authors' study uses panel data on 826 Chinese SOEs in manufacturing industries from 2011 to 2019. The authors employ the fixed-effects model with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, which are robust to heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence.

The authors find that SOEs increase capacity expansion as sociopolitical feedback becomes more negative, but they may not increase capacity expansion in response to positive sociopolitical feedback. Moreover, negative profitability feedback strengthens SOEs' capacity expansion in response to negative sociopolitical feedback. In contrast, negative profitability feedback weakens their response to positive sociopolitical feedback.

The authors' study offers a novel behavioral explanation of SOEs' operational decisions regarding capacity expansion. While the literature has traditionally assumed multiple goals as either hierarchical or compatible, the authors extend the BTOF's multiple-goal model to illuminate when firms pursue sociopolitical and financial goals as compatible (i.e. the activation rule) versus hierarchical (i.e. the sequential rule), thereby reconciling their tension in distinct performance situations. Practically, the authors provide fine-grained insights into how operations managers can prioritize multiple goals when making operational decisions. The authors' study also shows how policymakers can influence SOE operations to pursue sociopolitical goals for public benefit.

Departing from Hobfoll's conservation of resources theory, the paper aims to examine the relationship between resource losses (excessive job demands and unfavorable performance feedback) on the one hand, and negative job attitudes (dissatisfaction, reduced commitment, intention to leave) and burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced personal accomplishment) on the other hand.

The sample included surveys from 272 male constabulary officers who had participated in a developmental assessment center. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression.

The results showed direct associations between resource losses and negative outcomes. There were indications for the development of loss spirals for four out of six negative outcomes. Specifically, these relationships between job demands and negative outcomes were stronger for those officers receiving unfavorable feedback than for officers not receiving unfavorable feedback.

Employees confronted with excessive job demands and unfavorable developmental assessment center (DAC) feedback were most vulnerable to combined resource losses, and this experience was associated with negative outcomes (i.e. more dissatisfaction, less affective commitment, more emotional exhaustion, and more cynicism).

The unique contribution of this study is that, besides balancing the benefits of using DACs with the costs of implementation, it is emphasized that it is important to anticipate consequences of unfavorable feedback. Moreover, the disappointment and association with negative outcomes should be explicitly considered in the design of the DAC.