A Critical, Objective Review of Performance Feedback

Abstract

Providing information to employees about their past performance is a widely used strategy in organizations. The effects of performance feedback, however, have not been previously systematically evaluated. A total of 126 applications of feedback in organizations was reviewed. Each feedback application was evaluated in terms of the consistency of its effects. Effects were differentiated according to whether feedback was used alone or in combination with rewards and/or goal setting procedures and according to selected characteristics of feedback. The results of this review indicate that (1) feedback does not uniformly improve performance; (2) adding rewards and/or goal setting procedures to feedback improves the consistency of its effects; and (3) some characteristics of feedback are more consistently associated with improved performance than others. An analysis of the ways in which feedback might operate and consideration of basic research suggest that it will be effective to the extent that it is related to functional, differential reinforcement. The implications of these findings for using feedback and for needed research in organizational behavior management are discussed.

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