Abstract

A major tenet in the organization behavior literature is that feedback seeking should be encouraged because feedback stimulates organizational learning and improved productivity. Yet individuals often do not seek feedback. Because feedback can be evaluatively negative, people avoid face-to-face seeking to reduce the risk of damaging one's self-concept and ego. Information technology can conceivably mitigate some of these risks in seeking. Because computermediated feedback mechanisms such as electronic mail and computer-generated feedback mechanisms as in performance monitoring systems reduces the personal delivery of evaluative feedback, these mechanisms should induce a greater desire for, and promote a higher frequency of, feedback seeking. A laboratory experiment was designed to examine the effects of face-to-face, computer-mediated, and computer-generated feedback channels on feedback seeking behavior. Individuals in the computermediated or computer-generated conditions sought more feedback than those in the face-to-face condition. Task performance, however, was not significantly related to the amount of feedback requested. We discuss the differences in feedback seeking in terms of changes in social contextual cues mitigated by information technology during feedback seeking sessions.

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