Employee Responses to Performance Feedback from the Task

Abstract

A large body of research has examined the effects of feedback on work attitudes and behaviors. However, the role of individual differences in feedback-response relations has not been as thoroughly examined. In this field study, the moderating effects of global self-esteem (SE) on the relationship between performance feedback from the task and several work attitudes and behaviors were examined. As predicted, SE interacted with the frequency of performance feedback from the task to account for significant amounts of additional variance in job performance, general job satisfaction, absenteeism, and job search intentions. Specifically, low SEs had lower performance, absenteeism, and job search intentions than high SEs in relation to frequent performance feedback from the task. High SEs reported greater job satisfaction than low SEs in response to frequent task-derived performance feedback. The discussion centers on the implications the findings have for future research and for human resource management.