Transforming Passive Employee Engagement Into Active Engagement: Supervisor Development Feedback Valences on Feedback-Seeking Behavior

Employees' feedback-seeking behavior is an important way to develop and maintain self-awareness and interpersonal acuity, reduce uncertainty, boost creativity and improve innovative behavior and performance. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home has become the new normal, supervisor feedback and employees feedback-seeking has an increasingly important impact on team creativity and team innovation performance.In the practice of organizational management, there is frequently a "feedback vacuum" between managers and employees. There is increasing research on feedback-seeking behavior in the field of OBHRM. This paper is the first to evaluate the impact of work meaning and positive attributions on workers' feedback-seeking behavior, and the cross-level effects of supervisor development feedback including variable valence. The paper analyzes supervisor-employee paired data from 158 supervisors and 659 employees using multi-source, multi-temporal data to draw the following conclusions: (1) Positive supervisor development feedback has a significant cross-level positive effect on employee feedback-seeking behavior, whereas negative supervisor development feedback does not affect employee feedback-seeking behavior; (2) Work meaningfulness mediates the cross-level relationship between positive supervisor development feedback and employees' feedback-seeking behaviors, whereas negative supervisor development feedback and employees' feedback-seeking behaviors do not; (3) Positive attributions positively moderate the relationship between positive supervisor development feedback and work meaningfulness; while positively moderating the relationship between negative supervisor development feedback and work meaningfulness; (4) Positive attributions have a moderating effect on supervisor development feedback that influences the indirect relationship to feedback-seeking behavior by work meaningfulness.

Exploring users' content creation and information dissemination behavior in social media: The moderating effect of social presence

Users' personality traits reveal different social media behavior characteristics. In order to explore the intrinsic relationships between personality traits and social media behavior, this study analyzes the influence of users' personality traits on social media content creation and information dissemination behavior, as well as the moderating effect of social presence. We collect users' personality data via questionnaires, crawl social media behavior data of samples from social media sites, and then establish regression models to test the research hypotheses. The results show that extraversion has a positive impact on content creation and information dissemination behavior, conscientiousness has a negative impact on content creation behavior, openness and agreeableness have no significant impact on social media behavior, and social presence has significant moderating effects on the relationships between personality traits and social media behavior.

The Relationships among Chinese University EFL Learners' Feedback-Seeking Behavior, Achievement Goals, and Mindsets

This study investigated the characteristics of feedback-seeking behavior and the underlying motivational antecedents including the mindsets and achievement goals of Chinese EFL learners. Questionnaire data were collected from 677 learners taking English classes at different levels in China for (1) their beliefs about English learning (a fixed or growth mindset), (2) goal orientation in achievement-related situations (development or demonstration goals), and (3) FSB (whether to seek feedback, by what strategies, and from whom). Results indicated that Chinese EFL learners with a growth mindset or demonstration-approach goals proactively seek feedback through variant strategies (i.e., feedback direct inquiry, indirect inquiry, and monitoring) while those with development-approach goals or a fixed mindset seek feedback by monitoring only due to learners' different perceptions of the cost and value attached to different strategies. Furthermore, a demonstration approach partially mediated the predictive role of a growth mindset on three FSBs, while the relationships between feedback monitoring and the two mindsets were partially or fully mediated by a development approach.

The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory

The question of how people change their opinions through social interactions has been on the agenda of social scientific research for many decades. Now that the Internet has led to an ever greater interconnectedness and new forms of exchange that seem to go hand in hand with increasing political polarization, it is once again gaining in relevance. Most recently, the field of opinion dynamics has been complemented by social feedback theory, which explains opinion polarization phenomena by means of a reinforcement learning mechanism. According to the assumptions, individuals not only evaluate the opinion alternatives available to them based on the social feedback received as a result of expressing an opinion within a certain social environment. Rather, they also internalize the expected and thus rewarded opinion to the point where it becomes their actual private opinion. In order to put the implications of social feedback theory to a test, we conducted a randomized controlled laboratory experiment. The study combined preceding and follow-up opinion measurements via online surveys with a laboratory treatment. Social feedback was found to have longer-term effects on private opinions, even when received in an anonymous and sanction free setting. Interestingly and contrary to our expectations, however, it was the mixture of supportive and rejective social feedback that resulted in the strongest influence. In addition, we observed a high degree of opinion volatility, highlighting the need for further research to help identify additional internal and external factors that might influence whether and how social feedback affects private opinions.

Testing the influence of real-time performance feedback on employees in digital services

Purpose

While digital media changed the nature of communication in service contexts, often allowing customers to interact instantly with service providers, the implications and opportunities for managing service employees are widely unknown. This is surprising, given that service employees are an important determinant of service firms’ success. This article examines the effects of real-time performance feedback on employees’ service performance and investigates both how and under what conditions timely feedback encourages employees’ engagement.

Design/methodology/approach

Two experiments test the conceptual model and the proposed hypotheses. A field experiment uses real customer feedback gathered after interaction with the app-chat of a large telecommunications provider. It tests the effect of feedback timing on service employees’ performance and also examines the effect of feedback timing on their engagement. A subsequent scenario-based experiment then investigates the influence of selected moderators on the feedback timing–engagement relationship.

Findings

This article finds that real-time feedback leads to greater service performance than subsequent feedback. Furthermore, real-time feedback positively affects service employee engagement through the perceived controllability of the feedback and the service situation. Finally, feedback valence, task goals, individuals’ need for closure (NCL), and gender interact with feedback timing to influence employee engagement.

Originality/value

This research investigates the potential of real-time performance feedback for service firms, combines and extends a variety of literature streams, and provides recommendations for the future management of service employees.

Factors influencing trainers' feedback-giving behavior: a cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND

The literature provides some insight into the role of feedback givers, but little information about within-trainer factors influencing 'feedback-giving behaviours'. We looked for relationships between characteristics of feedback givers (self-efficacy, task perception, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness) and elements of observation and feedback (frequency, quality of content and consequential impact).

METHODS

We developed and tested several hypotheses regarding the characteristics and elements in a cross-sectional digital survey among GP trainers and their trainees in 2011 and 2012. We conducted bivariate analysis using Pearson correlations and performed multiple regression analysis.

RESULTS

Sixty-two trainer-trainee couples from three Dutch institutions for postgraduate GP training participated in the study. Trainer scores on 'task perception' and on a scale of the trait 'neuroticism' correlated positively with frequency of feedback and quality of feedback content. Multiple regression analysis supported positive correlations between task perception and frequency of feedback and between neuroticism and quality of feedback content. No other correlations were found.

CONCLUSION

This study contributes to the literature on feedback giving by revealing factors that influence feedback-giving behaviour, namely neuroticism and task perception. Trainers whose task perception included facilitation of observation and feedback (task perception) and trainers who were concerned about the safety of their patients during consultations with trainees (neuroticism) engaged more frequently in observation and feedback and gave feedback of higher quality.

Segers M. Understanding informal feedback seeking in the workplace

Purpose

– The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the position of employees in the organizational hierarchy is important in explaining their feedback seeking behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

– This study takes a social network perspective by using an ego-centric network survey to investigate employees ' feedback seeking behaviour within their professional networks. Data were collected from an online questionnaire among 243 employees working in a large multinational organization located in The Netherlands.

Findings

– Results indicate that employees frequently seek feedback from colleagues within the same department. However, managers or leaders seek significantly less feedback from colleagues in the same department and from coaches, as compared to others. Furthermore, employees perceive the feedback they receive from managers/leaders, coaches, and colleagues in the same department as useful.

Originality/value

– The study findings extend the existing literature on the dynamics of feedback seeking of employees across different hierarchical levels. Methodologically, an egocentric network survey was used to investigate the employees ' relationships within their professional network. The findings suggest that this approach, novel in research on feedback seeking, is valuable and promising.

Collective Personality Effects on Group Citizenship Behavior

This study examines the interaction of collective personality (i.e., the Big Five traits) and national diversity on group interpersonal citizenship behavior. Groups composed of diverse nationalities are theorized to manifest fewer initial shared understandings, enabling them to obtain more benefits than homogeneous groups from collective personality traits that promote better quality relationships. In a study of university students assigned to 15 nationally homogeneous groups ( n = 61) and 20 nationally heterogeneous groups ( n = 79), groups scoring higher on openness to experience, agreeableness, or extraversion show more interpersonal citizenship behavior. The effects of openness to experience, agreeableness, and extraversion are enhanced for nationally diverse teams. Moreover, neuroticism had no direct effect on interpersonal citizenship behavior; its interaction with national diversity yielded reversed effects. Neuroticism was negatively related to citizenship behavior in diverse groups and positively related to it in homogeneous groups. Theoretical and practical implications are developed for small group situations where diversity issues may threaten relationship quality.