Negative Performance Feedback Research Articles

Negative performance feedback from algorithms or humans? effect of medical researchers’ algorithm aversion on scientific misconduct

Institutions are increasingly employing algorithms to provide performance feedback to individuals by tracking productivity, conducting performance appraisals, and developing improvement plans, compared to traditional human managers. However, this shift has provoked considerable debate over the effectiveness and fairness of algorithmic feedback. This study investigates the effects of negative performance feedback (NPF) on the attitudes, cognition and behavior of medical researchers, comparing NPF from algorithms versus humans. Two scenario-based experimental studies were conducted with a total sample of 660 medical researchers (algorithm group: N1 = 411; human group: N2 = 249). Study 1 analyzes the differences in scientific misconduct, moral disengagement, and algorithmic attitudes between the two sources of NPF. The findings reveal that NPF from algorithms shows higher levels of moral disengagement, scientific misconduct, and negative attitudes towards algorithms compared to NPF from humans. Study 2, grounded in trait activation theory, investigates how NPF from algorithms triggers individual’s egoism and algorithm aversion, potentially leading to moral disengagement and scientific misconduct. Results indicate that algorithm aversion triggers individuals’ egoism, and their interaction enhances moral disengagement, which in turn leads to increased scientific misconduct among researchers. This relationship is also moderated by algorithmic transparency. The study concludes that while algorithms can streamline performance evaluations, they pose significant risks to scientific misconduct of researchers if not properly designed. These findings extend our understanding of NPF by highlighting the emotional and cognitive challenges algorithms face in decision-making processes, while also underscoring the importance of balancing technological efficiency with moral considerations to promote a healthy research environment. Moreover, managerial implications include integrating human oversight in algorithmic NPF processes and enhancing transparency and fairness to mitigate negative impacts on medical researchers’ attitudes and behaviors.

Reacting to criticism: What motivates top leaders to respond substantively to negative social performance feedback?

The responses of organizations in situations of negative feedback from stakeholders are attracting increasing scholarly and societal attention. The literature has so far largely focused on situational factors that direct such responses, while calling for a more acute examination of individual factors. Anchored in Stakeholder Theory and Trait Activation Theory, this study examines how and to what extent prosocial motivation (a normative-oriented trait) and fear of failure (an instrumental-oriented trait) determine organizational leaders’ substantive responses to negative social performance feedback. We test our predictions on two waves of original survey data, including a conjoint experiment, on a sample of leaders of young organizations. Our findings contribute to literature and practice related to organizational responses to social performance feedback.

Negative performance feedback and firms’ CSR strategy selection: Conformity or differentiation?

Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), studies debate about whether underperforming firms will engage in more corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this study, we categorize CSR into CSR conformity and CSR differentiation, and find that underperforming firms are more likely to increase CSR conformity but decrease CSR differentiation. Furthermore, market strategy deviation strengthens the positive effect of negative performance feedback on CSR conformity and the negative effect on CSR differentiation. This study sheds new light on the debate over the relationship between negative performance feedback and CSR.

The impact of financial feedback on the innovative activity of companies: the moderating role of corporate governance quality

ABSTRACT This research analyzes performance feedback and corporate innovative activity in the context of corporate governance quality. The research goal is as follows: to examine the influence of social and historical performance feedback on R&D intensity of a firm, and to determine whether governance quality strengthens interconnection between performance feedback and R&D intensity. The sample consists of panel data on 283 South-Eastern Asian public companies from the manufacturing industry sector. The sample covers seven countries during the time period from 2015 to 2020, providing 1698 firm-year observations. It was discovered that sample firms are sensitive to positive and negative social performance feedback and do not respond to historical feedback. A comparative analysis between types of feedback has shown that firms value social feedback more than historical feedback. It was also established that higher corporate governance quality decreases performance feedback sensitivity among firms, which weakens the relationship between the feedback and innovative activity. Firms with weak governance systems value social performance feedback more than companies with mature governance. The study of these types of feedback in combination with the quality of corporate governance can be used by company executives in corporate strategic planning and operational decision-making. CEOs should be ready to use performance feedback information in addition to their personal judgment.

Enhancing or attenuating? How patronage ties moderate the impact of performance feedback on performance improvement in the public sector

ABSTRACT This research investigates how performance feedback affects public organizations’ performance improvement and, more importantly, how patronage ties moderate the impact. Using China’s official city air quality ranking as the case, our empirical analyses with standard panel data models and the regression discontinuity design find that negative performance feedback leads to subsequent performance improvement and, more crucially and interestingly, that patronage ties enhance, rather than attenuate, this effect. Essentially, this study deepens and extends the performance feedback theory in the public sector by bringing in informal political institutions as boundary conditions, offering more nuanced understandings of organizational responses to performance feedback.

Performance Feedback, Target-Setting, and Data Manipulation in a Multi-Goal Situation: Evidence from Chinese Cities

While it is well recognized that performance management can induce gaming responses, the extant literature has mostly adopted a sole-goal perspective and neglected the influences of the interplay among multiple goals. This research attempts to fill this gap by bringing in the multi-goal perspective and investigating how performance feedback on the focal goal and targets set by higher-up authorities for the conflicting goal affect, independently and interactively, public organizations’ data manipulation in the focal goal. We posit that negative performance feedback on the focal goal makes public organizations more inclined to engage in data manipulation, and the target of a conflicting goal set by their higher-up authorities exerts influences by positively moderating this effect. Utilizing the context of China’s ‘environment-economy’ nexus, our empirical analyses using a novel approach to measuring cities’ manipulation of air quality data find robust evidence strongly supporting the theoretical arguments. This study represents an effort to open up a research agenda that engages the multi-goal perspective in gaming research.

Taking advantage of the fire: Does firm performance feedback have a supply chain contagion effect?

The increased interconnection among supply chain participants brought about by globalization has made supply chain management more crucial than ever for gaining a competitive advantage. We examine how supply chain participants respond to feedback on firm performance, with a focus on the effect of contagion on bargaining power. When a company's performance is below expectations, suppliers and customers tend to increase their bargaining power and potentially take actions to safeguard their interests. This is attributed to the decline in the focal company's product market power, resulting from negative performance feedback. Contrarily, positive performance feedback does not cause significant changes in the bargaining power of supply chain firms. Moreover, we explore the role of other stakeholders, such as creditors and investors, in influencing supply chain negotiations. The distrust of other stakeholders leads to the further improvement of the bargaining power of supply chain companies. We analyze the motivation of supply chain stakeholders to improve their bargaining power under performance feedback and develop a complete causal chain and solution on how to enhance future performance prediction to lessen the increase in bargaining power of the supply chain. This paper is both a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge on the financial impacts of business stakeholder decision-making and a cautionary tale for companies that urgently need to cluster their supply chain activities.

Does Low Memory Confidence Drive Excessive Reassurance Seeking in Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder? Insights from a Novel In Vivo Study

The factors driving excessive reassurance seeking in obsessive–compulsive disorder are incompletely understood. We investigated whether low memory confidence, which drives compulsive checking, may also lead to excessive reassurance seeking during a novel in vivo contamination-based task. Undergraduates (N = 91) completed a memory test and received sham positive or negative performance feedback. Participants then viewed a complicated cleaning video and completed a corresponding cleaning task whilst their reassurance seeking was covertly coded. Afterwards, participants rated their anxiety, confidence, and experimenter responsibility for task outcomes. The novel laboratory task induced high levels of reassurance seeking from participants (median = 5 reassurance requests). There was no evidence that manipulating memory confidence altered reassurance seeking. Greater reassurance seeking was correlated with decreased performance confidence and increased ratings of experimenter responsibility for negative cleaning task outcomes. Memory beliefs may not initiate reassurance seeking, suggesting a possible dissimilarity between reassurance seeking and compulsive checking.

Revisiting Black Americans' self-protective strategies: The effect of negative intelligence feedback on implicit (vs. explicit) self-esteem.

Black Americans use identity-based self-protective strategies to maintain their explicit self-esteem after a threat to their intelligence. This effect is consistent with the associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model, which suggests that self-protective strategies operate during a propositional process that results in no change in explicit self-esteem. However, the APE model also suggests that implicit self-esteem may be sensitive to an intelligence threat because it increases the accessibility of automatically activated evaluations about Black Americans, namely the stereotype that their group is unintelligent. These hypotheses are tested across two experiments. Black American participants across both experiments (Experiment 1: N = 57; 40 females, Mage = 21.60; Experiment 2: N = 79; 64 females, Mage = 24.86) completed an intelligence test, then were randomly assigned to receive either negative feedback about their performance or no-feedback. Participants then completed measures of implicit and explicit self-esteem. Participants in Experiment 2 also completed a measure of subjective identity centrality. In support of the hypotheses, Black American participants across both experiments who received negative performance feedback on an intelligence test exhibited lower implicit self-esteem compared to those who did not receive feedback. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that this effect emerged only among strongly identified Black American participants. Finally, and consistent with past research, explicit self-esteem was unaffected by negative performance feedback among all participants. This research demonstrates the boundary conditions of Black Americans' adoption of identity-based self-protective strategies to protect their implicit versus explicit self-esteem following an intelligence threat. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Reporting Only the Good News but Not the Bad? Mechanism of Negative Performance Feedback

Reporting Only the Good News but Not the Bad? Mechanism of Negative Performance Feedback

Choosing innovation alliance governance structure: The roles of performance feedback and top management team characteristics

Abstract While the importance of innovation alliance for high-technological firms is well-documented, existing literature provides little guidance on the role of performance feedback in an alliance governance structure choice. Drawing on performance feedback theory, this study sheds light on the association between performance deviating (either above or below) from firms’ social aspirations and the governance structure choice of innovation alliances. Using an unbalanced panel of Chinese biopharmaceutical firms spanning from 2007 to 2020, we find that firms experiencing negative performance feedback prefer a non-equity innovation alliance structure, whereas those with positive performance feedback are more likely to adopt an equity one. The strength of these relationships is contingent on top management team average tenure and educational-level diversity. Our findings both provide theoretical and practical insights into guiding how firms under different states of performance feedback select alliance governance structures.

Performance feedback and obsessive passion: The moderating role of human capital.

Based on the behavioral theory of the firm, we research how performance feedback influences the formation of CEOs' passion. We articulate that previous performance directly increases CEOs' passion. Specifically, positive affective outcomes (performance above aspiration-level) advance CEOs' positive feelings and motivation toward the domains of success (obsessive passion). For instance, when a firm accomplishes performance objectives, such as reaching sales goals, CEOs' positive feelings toward developing current products would be boosted. Moreover, negative affective outcomes (performance below aspiration-level) would also positively impact CEOs' passion since the CEOs would endeavor to reduce the difference between performance and their aspiration-level. As such, performance feedback is a critical antecedent of CEOs' obsessive passion. In addition, we apply human capital as a moderator between performance feedback and CEOs' obsessive passion. Results based on multiphase survey data from 189 CEOs of Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises indicate that both positive and negative performance feedback positively increase CEOs' obsessive passion. Moreover, human capital negatively moderates the relationship between positive performance feedback and CEOs' obsessive passion and positively moderates the relationship between negative performance feedback and CEOs' obsessive passion.

Firm performance feedback and organizational impression management: The moderating role of CEO overconfidence

Abstract We propose that while positive performance feedback is positively related to firm sentiment, negative performance feedback is negatively associated with the firm sentiment. Additionally, overconfident Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) will improve the positive relationship between positive performance feedback and firm sentiment and reduce the negative relationship between negative performance feedback and firm sentiment. Using 7,182 firm-year observations for the 2004−2017 period, we show that positive performance feedback positively affects firm sentiment, and negative performance feedback negatively influences firm sentiment. We also found that higher levels of CEO overconfidence will minimize the negative impact of negative performance feedback on firm sentiment. Our research extends the current discourse on organizational impression management (proxied by firm sentiment) and CEO overconfidence research as we provide a nuanced relationship between firm performance feedback and organizational impression management. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for corporate governance leaders and shareholders.

Does negative environmental performance feedback induce substantive green innovation? The moderating roles of external regulations and internal incentive

AbstractWhen the environmental performance is below the aspiration, will firms make substantive changes? In order to answer this question, based on the behavioral theory of the firm, this paper examines the impact of negative environmental performance feedback on substantive green innovation (GI) and its influencing mechanism. It is found that the negative environmental performance feedback induces substantive GI, which is positively moderated by external regulations (i.e., government environmental regulation and public environmental concern) and internal incentive (i.e., executive equity incentive). Media pressure and risk preference act as mediators in the above promotion effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the above promotion effect as well as the moderating effects of external regulations are more pronounced in private firms, while the moderating effect of internal incentive is more pronounced in state‐owned firms. Furthermore, the above promotion and moderating effects are more pronounced after the ESG rating event of SynTao Green Finance Agency. This paper offers new sights into understanding the motives of substantive GI and policy suggestion for promoting firms to achieve sustainable development.

Performance feedback on sales growth and M&A: Evidence from China

This study examines the effects of performance feedback on sales growth relative to social and historical aspirations on corporate merger and acquisition (M&A) decisions and M&A performance. A sample of 924 M&A deals announced by Chinese manufacturing firms between January 2006 and June 2022 is analyzed using logistic regression and multiple linear regression. Robustness tests are also conducted to show that the main results are consistent. We find that (1) negative performance feedback relative to social aspiration motivates acquirers to undertake more risk in M&A-related decisions such as choosing overseas targets and using non-deferred payments in deal structure; while negative historical performance feedback significantly encourages acquirers to choose deferred deal structure. Positive performance feedback does not have a significant impact on acquirers’ choices; (2) In terms of M&A performance, both negative and positive performance feedback relative to social aspiration can have a positive effect on M&A performance; while historical performance feedback cannot affect M&A performance. This paper addresses the heterogeneity of the effects of performance feedback (which is divided into historical and social performance feedback) on firm behavior and contributes to the Behavioral Theory of Firms and Stewardship theory.

Foreign executives, digital transformation, and innovation performance: Evidence from Chinese-listed firms.

This study investigates the effect of foreign executives on firms' innovation performance and the mediation role of digital transformation in Chinese-listed firms from 2011 to 2021. Our findings indicate that the presence of foreign executives in top management teams promotes firms' innovation performance by enhancing digital transformation. Further analyses show that foreign executives contribute significantly to improving firms' radical innovation performance rather than incremental innovation performance. We also examine the moderating effect of negative performance feedback and financing constraints between foreign executives and innovation performance, finding that foreign executives can promote innovation performance particularly in firms with negative performance feedback and weak financing constraints.

Does negative performance feedback always lead to negative responses? The role of trust in the leader

AbstractThis study draws from cognitive appraisal theory to examine when and how negative performance feedback could prevent employees from engaging in interpersonal counterproductive workplace behaviour towards the leader. We test the hypotheses using a three‐wave survey and a scenario‐based experiment with Chinese and Western samples, respectively. Our results indicate that negative performance feedback has a negative effect on perceived feedback quality when employees have a lower (vs. higher) level of trust in the leader. In addition, perceived feedback quality is negatively related to employee hostility towards leader and, in turn, interpersonal counterproductive workplace behaviour towards the leader. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Human and machine-induced social stress in complex work environments: Effects on performance and subjective state

Social stress at work can lead to severe consequences. As a result of technological developments, social stress will increasingly be induced by machines. It is therefore crucial to understand how machine-induced social stress affects operators. The present study aimed to compare human and machine-induced social stress with regard to its effect on primary and secondary task performance, and on subjective state (e.g., self-esteem, mood and justice). 90 participants worked on a high-fidelity simulation of a complex work environment, on which they had received extensive training (2h15). Social stress was induced by a human or a machine using a combination of negative performance feedback and ostracism. Results indicate that social stress did not affect performance, affect or state self-esteem. Machine-induced and human-induced social stress overall had similar effects, except for the latter impairing perceived justice. We discuss implications of these results for automation at the workplace and outline future research directions.

Environmental, Social, Governance Performance and Negative Performance Feedback: Firm Moderators in a Cross-country Context

In this study, we have examined two specific research questions. First, whether firms around the world with negative performance feedback would resort to more environmental, social, governance [ESG] performance or otherwise. Second, we examine whether firms’ ESG controversies and stakeholder orientation in a cross-country context, with distinctive legal system and ethical behaviour, would motivate them to undertake more ESG performance in such negative performance feedback conditions. Our primary findings show that negative performance feedback of a firm impacts its ESG performance in a strongly negative manner. Furthermore, we prove that both high stakeholder orientation and high ESG controversies significant negatively moderate firms’ ESG inclinations. This holds true irrespective of country-specific legal system and ethical behaviour contexts.

Productive or non-productive? Negative performance feedback and firms' cost behaviors

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of negative performance feedback on firms' cost behaviors including productive behaviors (i.e. R&D behaviors) and non-productive behaviors (i.e. selling behaviors and business entertainment behaviors), as well as to investigate the roles of ownership types and marketization.Design/methodology/approachA sample of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2018 is analyzed employing multiple regression models.FindingsThe results show that negative performance feedback has a positive but not significant effect on R&D behaviors, while its effect on selling behaviors is significantly positive. Meanwhile, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between negative performance feedback and business entertainment behaviors. Furthermore, when facing a performance dilemma, state-owned enterprises tend to adjust selling behaviors, while nonstate-owned enterprises pay more attention to business entertainment behaviors. In terms of marketization, the firms in high-marketization regions are more likely to adjust their R&D, selling and business entertainment behaviors, while the firms in low-marketization regions are difficult to adjust these cost behaviors.Practical implicationsThis study explores the role of negative performance feedback in firms' cost behaviors and provides empirical evidence about the differentiated influences regarding ownership types and marketization.Originality/valueIntegrating insights from existing studies and introducing the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory, this study proposes a more inclusive framework that addresses the impacts of negative performance feedback on firms' cost behaviors. This paper deepens the understanding of firms' decision behaviors in the dilemma of performance shortfall.