Feedback Environment

1. THE SUPERVISOR FEEDBACK
ENVIRONMENT IS EMPOWERING,
BUT NOT ALL THE TIME: FEEDBACK
ORIENTATION AS A CRITICAL
MODERATOR
Gabriel, Frantz, Levy, & Hilliard (2014)
Presented by Samuel E. Dunham

3. The Gameplan
 Prior Research
 Feedback Environment
 Empowerment
 The Study
 Implications and Future Research Avenues

4. Why Should We Care?
 There may be more factors to consider before trying to foster a
certain feedback environment
 There may be situations where the feedback environment can
negatively impact employees
 We may need to understand how employees utilize and desire
feedback to determine how the feedback environment may
affect them

5. Prior Research
 Research has found many positive effects for organizations that
support the use and solicitation of feedback
 Enhanced affective organizational commitment (Norris-Watts & Levy,
2004)
 Reduced perceptions of politics (Rosen, Levy, & Hall, 2006)
 Role clarity (Whitaker, Dahling, & Levy, 2007)
 Increased task and contextual performance (Whitaker et al., 2007)

6. Theoretical Gaps
 Does the feedback environment affect employee motivation?
 Psychological empowerment
 Are there factors/conditions that can attenuate the feedback to
outcome relationship?
 Does the feedback environment have effects over time on
employee empowerment?
 Is the feedback relevant in occupational contexts with more
challenging work demands?

7. Feedback Environment
 Feedback environment – the contextual aspects of day-to-day
supervisor-subordinate and coworker-coworker feedback
processes (Steelman, Levy, & Snell, 2004)
 Previous research focused on the extent that employees perceived
that supervisors frequently provided different forms of feedback
(Herold & Parsons, 1985)
 Scales lacked proper validation
 Inconsistent results
 Focused only on one type of feedback (positive/negative)
 Focus of the article is on supervisor-subordinate relationship in
regard to feedback

8. The Feedback Environment
 Source credibility
 Feedback quality
 Feedback delivery
 Frequency of favorable feedback
 Frequency of unfavorable feedback
 Source availability
 Promoting feedback seeking

9. Empowerment
 Psychological empowerment – the extent to which
individuals feel as though they have high levels of control over
their work environments (Spreitzer, 1995)
 Structural empowerment – focus is on actual management
practices and job design features like skill variety and task
identity (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990)
 Emphasis of psychological empowerment is on the cognitions
of the individuals in a given work context and reflects a state of
motivated effort to shape one’s work environment

10. Dimensions of Psychological
Empowerment
Meaning Competence
Self-
determination
Impact

11. Dimensions of Psychological
Empowerment
 Meaning – reflects the alignment between an employee’s job
demands, work goal, or purpose and his/her beliefs, values,
and standards
 Competence – reflects an individual’s perceived level of self-
efficacy on the job, or level of mastery
 Self-determination – reflects an individual’s level of choice in
the different tasks and actions he/she pursues in the workplace
 Impact – reflects the extent to which individuals perceive
having a voice in influencing the strategic or administrative
functions of the organization

12. Methods
 212 correctional facility organization employees (full-time)
 Out of 252
 Employees were in front-line positions
 58.5% female and 65.6% Caucasian
 Average organizational tenure – 5.88 years
 Average tenure with current supervisor – 2.44 years
 Employees provided data at two time points 3 months apart
 Employees had 3 weeks to complete the survey and have it sent to
the researcher
 Only participants who completed the first survey were given the
second survey

13. Measures
 Time 1
 Supervisor feedback environment
 The Feedback Environment Scale (FES)
 Feedback orientation
 The feedback orientation scale
 Time 2
 Psychological empowerment
 The Psychological Empowerment Scale
 Control
 Tenure with one's current supervisor (in years)

14. Hypotheses
 Hypothesis 1 – The supervisor feedback environment at Time
1 positively relates to meaning, competence, self-
determination, and impact at Time 2
 Hypothesis 2 – Time 1 feedback orientation moderates the
relationship between Time 1 supervisor feedback environment
and Time 2 meaning, competence, self-determination, and
impact; the positive relationship between supervisor feedback
environment and the dimensions of empowerment will be
stronger when feedback orientation is high and weak when
orientation feedback is low

18. Results Recap
 H1 was partially supported
 Perceptions of the supervisor feedback environment positively predicted
meaning and impact
 Did not positively predict competence or self-determination
 H2 was mostly supported
 Feedback orientation moderated the relationship between supervisor
feedback environment perceptions and the following factors:
 Meaning
 Competence
 Self-determination
 No significant interaction for impact

19. Discussion
 The feedback environment may not be enough to increase
perceptions of psychological empowerment an employee feels
in their job
 Based on H1 findings
 Meaning
 Employees high in feedback orientation are more likely to find
meaning in their work in a positive feedback environment
 Competence and Self-Determination
 A positive feedback environment can have a negative influence on
performance for those low in feedback orientation
 May reduce feelings of autonomy and self-efficacy

20. Implications
 Feedback orientation among individuals must be considered
 The feedback environment fostered by supervisors cannot be
‘one size fits all’
 Gauging the feedback orientation of employees may be helpful
to supervisors
 Supervisor feedback environment can positively influence the
level of impact employees feel in their work

21. Limitations and Future Directions
 Self-report measures were used
 Cross-lagged panel designs should be examined in future
research
 Utilize experience sampling methodology or daily diary reports
 Sample came from unique work context

22. Discussion Questions
 There is no mention of how the feedback orientation scores
were dichotomized into the high and low feedback orientation
categories. How does this affect your interpretation of the study
findings?
 In an organization that relies on minimum wage workers (e.g.,
fast food), is it important to gauge the feedback orientation
trend among the employees?
 These organizations are normally characterized by high turnover,
monotonous work, and little to no autonomy