Relationship between negative feedback and feedback management behaviours: a dual-process model

The process perspective of performance feedback suggests that the way employees are given feedback influences their behaviours to manage future feedback. However, research on feedback management behaviours has often developed independently from the broader feedback literature, resulting in an incomplete understanding of the feedback process. Bridging the two streams of research, we draw from the dual-process model of information processing to explain how supervisor negative feedback impacts employees' feedback management behaviours—specifically, feedback-seeking behaviour and feedback-avoiding behaviour—via organization-based self-esteem and frustration. The results of two time-lagged surveys align with our predictions for the frustration pathway while providing mixed results for the organization-based self-esteem pathway. Meanwhile, we found consistent results that leader-member exchange serves as a double-edged sword for employees, weakening the negative effects of supervisor negative feedback on employees' organization-based self-esteem while strengthening the positive relationship between supervisor negative feedback and frustration. The study not only provides a process perspective to understand the cyclical nature of feedback, but also offers implications to better give, receive and manage feedback in practice.