Exploring the Dimensionality of Managers' Performance Feedback to Subordinates

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the dimensional structure of managers' performance feedback to subordinates. Three hundred and sixty pairs of managers and subordinates from over 50 organizations located in three countries participated in the study. Both members of each pair completed an instrument assessing the timeliness, specificity, frequency, and sensitivity of the manager's positive and negative performance feedback. The relationship among these dimensions was examined using both confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. The results offer little evidence that these dimensions actually exist as distinct features of managers' performance feedback behavior. Instead, they appear to covary so strongly as to be empirically indiscriminable. This covariation is most extreme within the positive and negative feedback domains. It is substantially less, though still present, across domains. These results suggest that it may be more appropriate to examine the overall quality of managers' performance feedback than to focus on each dimension separately.

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